While science parks represent one of the most important policy initiatives to stimulate firm development and growth, their contributions are still highly debated. This paper takes a novel customer-oriented approach to disentangle the contributions science parks provide to their tenants. Particularly, we qualitatively explore when and how science park tenants reach customer satisfaction and how tenants cope with low levels of satisfaction. Our study finds that reaching customer satisfaction is contingent on tenants’ expectations, perceived service quality, and pre-entry achievements. We further disentangle coping strategies used by tenants when they are confronted with low levels of satisfaction. Our study provides important theoretical contributions to the organizational sponsorship literature by adding new insights from social psychology and holds valuable practical and policy implications.

尽管科学园是刺激企业发展和增长的最重要的政策举措之一，但其贡献仍受到高度争议。本文采用了一种新颖的面向客户的方法来弄清科学园区向其租户提供的贡献。特别是，我们定性地探索科学园租户何时以及如何达到客户满意度，以及租户如何应对低水平的满意度。我们的研究发现，要使客户满意，取决于租户的期望，感知的服务质量和入职前的成就。当租户面临低水平的满意度时，我们将进一步消除租户使用的应对策略。