How different policy instruments affect green product innovation: A differentiated perspective

Abstract

Based on representative firm-level data for the three countries Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, we investigate the effects of energy-related regulations, taxes, voluntary agreements, and subsidies on the creation of green energy products, and analyze through which channels policy affects green product innovation and which factors mediate the observed effects. Policy may affect green product innovation by directly stimulating the supply of green products/services, or more indirectly by stimulating the demand for green products/services. Our data set allows us to distinguish between the two channels, which improves our understanding of the frequently observed positive net effect of policies. Controlling for the demand-side effect, taxes and regulations are negatively related with green product innovation. Hence, if taxes and regulation do not trigger additional demand, they decrease the propensity to innovate. These effects are ameliorated for technologically very advanced firms and for firms with a high level of financial awareness. Subsidies and (partly) voluntary agreements are positively related with green product innovation.

Environmental innovation practices and green product innovation performance: A perspective from organizational climate

“…The concerns of the firms for the environment has made the green product innovation becoming more importance, lots of scholars have investigated the organizational factors that affect green product innovation (Dangelico et al, ; Stucki, Woerter, Arvanitis, Peneder, & Rammer, ; Zhao, Feng, & Shi, ). Studies have examined, market demand, external involvement, legislation, knowledge (Zhao et al, ), interfunctional collaboration (Aschehoug, Boks, & Støren, ; Jabbour, Santos, Fonseca, & Nagano, ), innovation‐oriented learning (De Medeiros et al, ), and creative thinking (Awan, Sroufe, & Kraslawski, ).…”

Technological and organizational capital: Where complementarities exist

“…A crucial benefit over the CIS is that it additionally gathers information about the firm-specific usage of digital technologies as well as novel organizational practices-both of which play a key role here. The survey procedure employs the following mechanisms to enhance the representativeness of the sample and the accuracy of responses (see, e.g., Arvanitis et al, 2017;Siegenthaler & Stucki, 2015;Stucki, Woerter, Arvanitis, Peneder, & Rammer, 2018): First, comparable to other KOF surveys, the KOF Innovation Surveys are sent in written form to the executive board and the paper-based form also allows them to handover parts of the survey to the respective field experts, which promotes the likelihood of accurate replies (cf., e.g., Stucki et al, 2018). Second, the samples employ a stratification procedure with 29 industries as well as three different groups of company sizes (specific to each industry) that entirely cover large firms (cf., e.g., Siegenthaler & Stucki, 2015).…”

The adoption of green energy technologies: The role of policies in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland

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Publicly available data is not sufficient to identify the relative effects of different policies. It need survey data for at least two reasons (see Stucki et al 2016). First, to get a complete picture, all relevant policies would need to be identified, which is hardly possible as they can be firm/sector- and technology-specific.

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