Scholars have formed a general consensus that entrepreneurs’ cognition, motivation and emotion influence their entrepreneurial process. Yet, existing knowledge on entrepreneurial decision-making behavior remains incomplete because little empirical evidence is known about how situational regulatory focus, immediate emotion and need for cognition jointly affect individual decision-making of technological entrepreneurship. According to the exploration-exploitation framework built by March (1991), technological entrepreneurship can be divided into two types: exploration-oriented technological entrepreneurship, and exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurship. The goal of this study is therefore to examine the joint effect of situational regulatory focus, immediate emotion and need for cognition on individual decision-making of the two types of technological entrepreneurship. In this study, a 2 (situational regulatory focus: promotion vs prevention) × 2 (immediate emotion: negative vs positive) × 2 (need for cognition: high vs low) between-subject experiment was designed. Two dependent variables of the experiment are: the propensity of individuals to act on exploration-oriented technological entrepreneurship, and the propensity of individuals to act on exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurship. A total of 80 undergraduate students participated in the experiment. The participants were asked to describe their ideal and ought selves to induce their promotion focus and prevention focus, respectively. They were also asked to see different film clips to induce their negative and positive emotions. This study also worked out its own decision-making scenarios for the two types of technological entrepreneurship. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was employed in this study. The results revealed that individuals with promotion regulatory focus demonstrated a higher propensity to act on both exploration- and exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurships than those with prevention regulatory focus. Individuals with positive emotion demonstrated a higher propensity to act on exploration-oriented technological entrepreneurship than those with negative emotion. Individuals with a high need for cognition demonstrated a higher propensity to act on both exploration- and exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurships than those with a low need for cognition. The interactive effect of situational regulatory focus and immediate emotion significantly affected the propensity of individuals to act on exploration-oriented technological entrepreneurship, but it did not significantly affect their propensity to act on exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurship. The interactive effect of immediate emotion and need for cognition significantly affected the propensity of individuals to act on exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurship, but it did not significantly affect their propensity to act on exploration-oriented technological entrepreneurship. The most important theoretical contribution of this study is to help answer the question “why some people show a higher propensity to act on exploration- and/or exploitation-oriented technological entrepreneurship than others.” This study offers a more nuanced understanding of the individual decision-making behavior of the two types of technological entrepreneurship by focusing on the three critical but previously underexplored drivers (i.e., situational regulatory focus, immediate emotion and need for cognition). In addition to enhancing the current understanding of the effect of situational regulatory focus, immediate emotion and need for cognition on risk-taking behavior, this study provides an important theoretical insight into entrepreneurial decision-making behavior. This study has also taken one step forward in advancing research on regulatory focus, emotion, need for cognition, and entrepreneurial decisions, thereby stimulating more future research in these fields.