Environmental innovation in European transition countries

Abstract

This paper explores the demand-pull, technology-push and regulation factors influencing the environmental innovation strategies. We focus on a subset of manufacturing firms of a group of European Transition Countries. The data available to investigate the driving factors that lead to eco-innovate are taken from the Community Innovation Survey data (CIS 2014). The data is a cross-section covering the three-year period between 2012 and 2014. We employ a multivariate probit model to observe the effect of several drivers on eco-innovation, captured by means of different measures. Empirical findings highlight that: (i) some drivers are common to some types of eco-innovation; (ii) regulation does have a positive impact on all drivers. The latter provides a clear-cut implication for policy-making. Broadly speaking, in transition economies public policies and invectives appear to trigger environmental innovation much more than demand-pull factors.

Four types of eco-innovation for Baltic firms

“…In contrast, the role of future regulation is controversial. According to the results obtained by Horbach et al (2012), future regulation drives the German firms' environmental innovation decision, whereas the analysis carried out by Biscione et al (2021) shows that future regulation does not affect the eco-innovation actions in the European transition countries.…”

“…Cainelli et al, 2020;. Only few papers are devoted to eco-innovation in Transition countries (Biscione et al, 2021;Cooke, 2011;Horbach, 2016) and particularly in the Baltic area (Melece & Hazners, 2017;Melece, 2015). Exploiting the Eco-Innovation Index 1 provided by Eurostat, these works analyze the eco-innovation performance in EU member states highlighting that the Baltic countries, with respect to the other EU countries, are characterized by a low eco-innovation level.…”

“…Therefore, there is no comprehensive empirical evidence from microeconomic literature on eco-innovation in Baltic area. The only empirical paper that investigates the Baltic area in comparison with other transition countries is carried out by Biscione et al (2021). Using CIS 2014 data survey and applying a multivariate probit model, they find that Baltic manufacturing firms, in comparison with the firms operating in the other transition countries taken into account, are less sensitive to implement eco-product and eco-organization.…”

“…Using CIS 2014 data survey and applying a multivariate probit model, they find that Baltic manufacturing firms, in comparison with the firms operating in the other transition countries taken into account, are less sensitive to implement eco-product and eco-organization. Differently from the analysis conducted by Biscione et al (2021) we focus only on Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). These are transition economies with common features such as similar history and economic structure.…”

“…The attention on the manufacturing sector is due to: (i) the potential eco-innovative strategies that this sector presents and (ii) the high awareness of firms about environmental standards and certifications (EIO, 2013). In contrast to Biscione et al (2021), we consider four types of eco-innovation: (i) eco-product, (ii) eco-process, (iii) eco-organization and (iv) ecomarketing. We use cross-sectional data taken from the Community Innovation Survey -CIS 2014 to get a multivariate probit model to explore if the eco-innovative strategies of firms are complementary or replace each other.…”