The Mechanism Of Corporate Eco-innovation

According to the Measuring Eco-Innovation (MEI) project, eco-innovation is the production, assimilation or exploitation of a product, production process, service or management or business method that is novel to the organization (developing or adopting it) and which results, throughout its life cycle, in a reduction of environmental risk, pollution and other negative impacts of resources use (including energy use) compared to relevant alternatives. Eco-innovation has been widely considered as the engine of sustainable transition of economic development and has become an integral national development strategy by many countries, including our country China. In the last 20 years, China has taken varieties of measures to promote eco-innovation at enterprise and national level, such as cleaner production audits, eco-industrial parks and circular economy implementation. However, eco-innovation performance is not optimistic and the corresponding capability is still weak. Currently, an urgent task is how to realize ecological transition of economic development by encouraging enterprises to promote eco-innovation.Along with eco-innovation practices, meanwhile, eco-innovation has gradually become an independent academic concept by integrating innovation theory and environmental management theory Being still in the initial stage, there exist many disputes on some key questions and lead to conflict conclusions, such as "how to define eco-innovation and how to classify them", "how to measure eco-innovation performance", "what are key factors for corporate eco-innovation and what is the operational mechanism". All these questions should be studied further in order to provide guidelines to enterprises and/or governments, especially to China. Currently, China lacks of systematical, in-depth empirical researches on corporate eco-innovation, which makes eco-innovation study to be an important and urgent task.From the start of discussion on eco-innovation content and typology, the thesis focuses on the basic research propositions, how enterprise carry out eco-innovation by presenting "feature-capability-performance" model. Specifically, three research questions are explored layer by layer:(1) what types of eco-innovation? what is the relationship between eco-innovation typology and performance? (2) what is the relationship between environmental policies and eco-innovation performance? (3) what factors influence enterprise eco-innovation and what is the operational mechanism?To explore these issues, this study lasted 4 years'field research in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Henan provinces by visiting more than 110 industrial enterprises. Three models were designed and validated based on four typical exploratory case studies and a survey on 279 enterprises in Beilun region of Zhejiang Province:1) the first model (Model 1) analyzes the relationship between eco-innovation typology and performance; 2) the second model (Model 2) on the relationship between environmental policy types and eco-innovation performance; 3) the third model (Model 3) is on what factors are key to corporate eco-innovation and the operational mechanism. By combining the exploratory case studies and econometric analysis with structural equation modeling, the thesis draws the following main conclusions:1) different types of eco-innovation will lead to differences in environmental performance, however not lead to differences in competitiveness performance;2) the relationships between eco-innovation topolopy and performance are affected by the stringency of environmental regulation (environment policy and policy implementation), in more details, policy implementation has a more remarkable regulation effect on environmental performance than policy types, while the policy type has a more remarkable regulation effect on competitiveness performance than policy implementation;3) no significant direct roles has been observed for environmental policy on eco-innovation performance, except the case of voluntary agreements on environmental performance;4) when considering the regulation effect of business types, the push-pull effect of different environmental policies are very significant. For the resource-dependent, capital-intensive, labor-intensive or technology-intensive enterprises, each type can be observed to have a significant role of environmental policy on both environment and competitive performance, regardless of command and control type, market-oriented classes, information tools, or voluntary agreements;5) A corporate eco-innovation mechanism model based on "feature dimensions-capacity-performance" is proposed, with the three feature dimensions being technology, resources and relationships, and the two intermediary viariables being the internal and external capability to integrate environmental and economic issues. Through the Structure Equation Modeling (SEM) with the survey of 279 samples, four major opreratoinal paths of corporate eco-innovation have been found: "resources directly affecting the eco-innovation performance", "all dimensions of innovation characteristics (technology, resources and relationships) affecting the eco-innovation performance through the internal integration of environmental and economic issues", "all dimensions (technology, resources and relationships) affecting the eco-innovation performance through the external integration of environmental and economic issues", and "the internal integration of environmental and economic issues directly affecting eco-innovation performance".This thesis has three innovative achievements as follows:(1) Clarifying the meaning of corporate eco-innovation and presenting eco-innovation topology including end-of-pipe innovation, process innovation, product innovation and organizational innovation. Model 1 reveals the scale effect of eco-innovation on innovatioin performance, and challenges the traditional understanding of environmental management theory on eco-innovation (such as the different competitiveness performance of end-of-pipe and cleaner production). The policy implication is that enterprises should establish and strengthen the overall viewpoint of eco-innovation;2) Model 2 reveals that the relationship between environmental policy and corporate eco-innovation performance are regulated by enterprises typology. By introducing the corporate type as regulation viariable, the paper contributes to the Porter Hypothesis which talks about the impact of environmental regulation on business performance. The policy implication is that Chinese government should formulate different environmental policies for different types of enterprises; 3) The mechanism model based on "feature-capability-performance" unlocks the "features-performance" black box of corporate eco-innovation. It reveals the relationship and interactions existing among the corporate structure, capacity and eco-innovation performance. Especially, this model uncovers how the "dual-externality" of eco-innovation affects the business performance and how the push-and-pull effect of enviromental policy happens.In summary, the above theoretical and empirical researches enrich and improve the enterprise eco-innovation theory, from multiple theoretical perspectives by incorporating economics, management and sociology science. These studies have important theoretical and practical values, which can provide not only theoretical bases for follow-up study but also practical guidelines for enterprises and government.