This study examines how behavioral factors of business owners impact on the intention to use private finance in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study adopts the theory of planned behavior to investigate the effect of attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control on the choice and use of retained earnings and private equity by SMEs. The research samples are firms across 29 countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The study uses partial least square structural equation modeling for the analysis. It was found that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control of owners of SMEs’ impact on their intention to use private finance at a statistically significant level of 1 percent. These findings are discussed and the implications and suggestions for future study are proposed in this paper.

本研究探讨了企业主的行为因素如何影响中小型企业（SME）使用私人融资的意图。该研究采用计划行为理论来研究态度，主观规范和知觉行为控制对中小企业选择和使用保留收益和私募股权的影响。研究样本来自东欧和中亚的29个国家/地区的公司。该研究使用偏最小二乘结构方程模型进行分析。研究发现，中小型企业所有者的态度，主观规范和行为控制对他们使用私人融资的意图的影响在统计上为1％，具有统计学意义。本文讨论了这些发现，并提出了对未来研究的启示和建议。