IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/srt/wpaper/0614.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

SMEs and Barriers to Eco-Innovation in EU: A Diverse Palette of Greens

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Marin

    (CERIS-CNR, National Research Council of Italy, Milan.)

  • Alberto Marzucchi

    (CERIS-CNR, National Research Council of Italy, Milan.)

  • Roberto Zoboli

    (CERIS-CNR, National Research Council of Italy, Milan.)

Abstract

Eco-innovation is an explicit aim of major EU policy strategies. Many environmental policies de facto require firms to eco-innovate to comply with policy requirements, while the overlap between policy-driven and market-driven eco-innovation strategies is increasingly important for many firms. Barriers to eco-innovation can then emerge as a critical factor in either preventing or stimulating EU strategies, policy implementation, and 'green strategies' by firms. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy of EU SMEs in terms of barriers to eco-innovation. The aim is to discriminate among SMEs on how they differ in terms of perception of barriers and engagement in environmental innovation, thus highlighting the need to look at eco-innovation barriers in relation to firms' attitudes, technological and organizational capabilities, and strategies. We identify six clusters of SMEs. These clusters include firms facing 'Revealed barriers', 'Deterring barriers', 'Cost deterred' firms, 'Market deterred' firms, 'Non eco-innovators' and 'Green champions'. The clusters show substantial differences in terms of eco-innovation adoption. We show that our proposed taxonomy has little overlap with sector classifications. This diversity should be taken into account for successful environmental innovation policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Marin & Alberto Marzucchi & Roberto Zoboli, 2014. "SMEs and Barriers to Eco-Innovation in EU: A Diverse Palette of Greens," SEEDS Working Papers 0614, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Apr 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:srt:wpaper:0614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/papers/RePec/srt/wpaper/0614.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/papers/RePec/srt/wpaper/0614.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stefan Ambec & Mark A. Cohen & Stewart Elgie & Paul Lanoie, 2013. "The Porter Hypothesis at 20: Can Environmental Regulation Enhance Innovation and Competitiveness?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 7(1), pages 2-22, January.
    2. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2013. "Is money all? Financing versus knowledge and demand constraints to innovation," MERIT Working Papers 029, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    3. Amaresh K. Tiwari & Pierre Mohnen & Franz C. Palm & Sybrand Schim Loeff, 2008. "Financial Constraint and R&D Investment: Evidence from CIS," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Cees Beers & Alfred Kleinknecht & Roland Ortt & Robert Verburg (ed.), Determinants of Innovative Behaviour, chapter 10, pages 217-242, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Pierre Blanchard & Jean-Pierre Huiban & Antonio Musolesi & Patrick Sevestre, 2013. "Where there is a will, there is a way? Assessing the impact of obstacles to innovation," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 22(3), pages 679-710, June.
    5. Mazzanti, Massimiliano & Zoboli, Roberto, 2006. "Examining the Factors Influencing Environmental Innovations," Climate Change Modelling and Policy Working Papers 12041, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    6. Horbach, Jens & Rammer, Christian & Rennings, Klaus, 2012. "Determinants of eco-innovations by type of environmental impact — The role of regulatory push/pull, technology push and market pull," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 112-122.
    7. G. M.P. Swann, 2009. "The Economics of Innovation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13211.
    8. Giulio Cainelli & Massimiliano Mazzanti & Sandro Montresor, 2012. "Environmental Innovations, Local Networks and Internationalization," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(8), pages 697-734, November.
    9. Jaffe, Adam B. & Newell, Richard G. & Stavins, Robert N., 2005. "A tale of two market failures: Technology and environmental policy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2-3), pages 164-174, August.
    10. Mohnen, Pierre & Roller, Lars-Hendrik, 2005. "Complementarities in innovation policy," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 1431-1450, August.
    11. Lanjouw, Jean Olson & Mody, Ashoka, 1996. "Innovation and the international diffusion of environmentally responsive technology," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 549-571, June.
    12. De Marchi, Valentina, 2012. "Environmental innovation and R&D cooperation: Empirical evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 614-623.
    13. Shapira, Philip & Gök, Abdullah & Klochikhin, Evgeny & Sensier, Marianne, 2014. "Probing “green” industry enterprises in the UK: A new identification approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 93-104.
    14. Hanna Hottenrott & Bettina Peters, 2012. "Innovative Capability and Financing Constraints for Innovation: More Money, More Innovation?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(4), pages 1126-1142, November.
    15. Maria Luisa Mancusi & Andrea Vezzulli, 2010. "R&D, Innovation and Liquidity Constraints," KITeS Working Papers 030, KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy, revised May 2010.
    16. Bronwyn Hall, 2004. "The financing of research and development," Chapters, in: Anthony Bartzokas & Sunil Mani (ed.), Financial Systems, Corporate Investment in Innovation, and Venture Capital, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Claudia Ghisetti & Alberto Marzucchi & Sandro Montresor, 2013. "Does external knowledge affect environmental innovations? An empirical investigation of eleven European countries," DISEIS - Quaderni del Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo dis1301, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimento di Economia internazionale, delle istituzioni e dello sviluppo (DISEIS).
    18. D’Este, Pablo & Iammarino, Simona & Savona, Maria & von Tunzelmann, Nick, 2012. "What hampers innovation? Revealed barriers versus deterring barriers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 482-488.
    19. Simona Iammarino & Francesca Sanna-Randaccio & Maria Savona, 2009. "The perception of obstacles to innovation. Foreign multinationals and domestic firms in Italy," Revue d'économie industrielle, De Boeck Université, vol. 0(1), pages 75-104.
    20. Brunnermeier, Smita B. & Cohen, Mark A., 2003. "Determinants of environmental innovation in US manufacturing industries," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 278-293, March.
    21. Hölzl, Werner & Janger, Jürgen, 2013. "Does the analysis of innovation barriers perceived by high growth firms provide information on innovation policy priorities?," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 80(8), pages 1450-1468.
    22. Pablo D'Este & Francesco Rentocchini & Jaider Manuel Vega Jurado, 2010. "Lowering barriers to engage in innovation: evidence from the Spanish innovation survey," Openloc Working Papers 1020, Public policies and local development.
    23. Frederique Savignac, 2008. "Impact Of Financial Constraints On Innovation: What Can Be Learned From A Direct Measure?," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(6), pages 553-569.
    24. Kenneth Arrow, 1962. "Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention," NBER Chapters, in: The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, pages 609-626, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    25. Baldwin, John & Lin, Zhengxi, 2002. "Impediments to advanced technology adoption for Canadian manufacturers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-18, January.
    26. Demirel, Pelin & Kesidou, Effie, 2011. "Stimulating different types of eco-innovation in the UK: Government policies and firm motivations," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1546-1557, June.
    27. Galia, Fabrice & Legros, Diego, 2004. "Complementarities between obstacles to innovation: evidence from France," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1185-1199, October.
    28. Jens Horbach & Vanessa Oltra & Jean Belin, 2013. "Determinants and Specificities of Eco-Innovations Compared to Other Innovations--An Econometric Analysis for the French and German Industry Based on the Community Innovation Survey-super-1," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(6), pages 523-543, August.
    29. Giulio Cainelli & Massimiliano Mazzanti & Roberto Zoboli, 2011. "Enviromental Innovations, Complementarity and Local/Global Cooperation," Working Papers 201104, University of Ferrara, Department of Economics.
    30. Massimiliano Mazzanti & Roberto Zoboli, 2009. "Embedding environmental innovation in local production systems: SME strategies, networking and industrial relations: evidence on innovation drivers in industrial districts," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 169-195.
    31. Simona Iammarino & Francesca Sanna-Randaccio & Maria Savona, 2007. "The perception of obstacles to innovation. Multinational and domestic firms in Italy," Working Papers of BETA 2007-12, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    32. Daniel C. Esty & Michael E. Porter, 1998. "Industrial Ecology and Competitiveness: Strategic Implications for the Firm," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 2(1), pages 35-43, January.
    33. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2013. "Is money all? Financing versus knowledge and demand constraints to innovation," MERIT Working Papers 2013-029, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    34. Dominique Tourigny & Can Le, 2004. "Impediments to innovation faced by Canadian manufacturing firms," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 217-250.
    35. Horbach, Jens, 2008. "Determinants of environmental innovation--New evidence from German panel data sources," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 163-173, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christoph P. Kiefer & Pablo Del Río González & Javier Carrillo‐Hermosilla, 2019. "Drivers and barriers of eco‐innovation types for sustainable transitions: A quantitative perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 155-172, January.
    2. Amandine Pinget & Rachel Bocquet & Caroline Mothe, 2015. "Barriers to Environmental Innovation in SMEs: Empirical Evidence from French Firms," Post-Print hal-01300837, HAL.
    3. Jose García-Quevedo & Francisco Mas-Verdú & Gabriele Pellegrino, 2017. "What firms don’t know can hurt them: Overcoming a lack of information on technology," Working Papers 2017/19, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    4. Claudia Ghisetti & Massimiliano Mazzanti & Susanna Mancinelli & Mariangela Zoli, 2015. "Do financial constraints make the environment worse off? Understanding the effects of financial barriers on environmental innovations," SEEDS Working Papers 0115, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Jan 2015.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giovanni Marin & Alberto Marzucchi & Roberto Zoboli, 2015. "SMEs and barriers to Eco-innovation in the EU: exploring different firm profiles," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 671-705, July.
    2. Pinget, Amandine, 2016. "Spécificités des déterminants des innovations environnementales : une approche appliquée aux PME [Specificities of determinants for environmental innovation : an approach applied to SMEs]," MPRA Paper 80108, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Amandine Pinget & Rachel Bocquet & Caroline Mothe, 2015. "Barriers to Environmental Innovation in SMEs: Empirical Evidence from French Firms," Post-Print hal-01300837, HAL.
    4. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2013. "Is money all? Financing versus knowledge and demand constraints to innovation," MERIT Working Papers 029, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    5. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2013. "Is money all? Financing versus knowledge and demand constraints to innovation," MERIT Working Papers 2013-029, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    6. José García-Quevedo & Gabriele Pellegrino & Maria Savona, 2017. "Reviving demand-pull perspectives: The effect of demand uncertainty and stagnancy on R&D strategy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 41(4), pages 1087-1122.
    7. Claudia Ghisetti & Massimiliano Mazzanti & Susanna Mancinelli & Mariangela Zoli, 2015. "Do financial constraints make the environment worse off? Understanding the effects of financial barriers on environmental innovations," SEEDS Working Papers 0115, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised Jan 2015.
    8. Davide Antonioli & Alberto Marzucchi & Maria Savona, 2017. "Pain shared, pain halved? Cooperation as a coping strategy for innovation barriers," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 42(4), pages 841-864, August.
    9. José García-Quevedo & Gabriele Pellegrino & Maria Savona, 2017. "Reviving demand-pull perspectives: The effect of demand uncertainty and stagnancy on R&D strategy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 41(4), pages 1087-1122.
    10. Hölzl, Werner & Janger, Jürgen, 2014. "Distance to the frontier and the perception of innovation barriers across European countries," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 707-725.
    11. Vicente Salas-Fumás & Javier Ortiz, 2019. "Innovations’ Success and Failure in the Business Cycle," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-22, August.
    12. Ghisetti, Claudia & Marzucchi, Alberto & Montresor, Sandro, 2015. "The open eco-innovation mode. An empirical investigation of eleven European countries," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(5), pages 1080-1093.
    13. Sanni, Maruf, 2018. "Drivers of eco-innovation in the manufacturing sector of Nigeria," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 303-314.
    14. Ghisetti,Claudia & Marzucchi,Alberto & Montresor,Sandro, 2013. "Does external knowledge affect environmental innovations? An empirical investigation of eleven European countries," INGENIO (CSIC-UPV) Working Paper Series 201301, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), revised 23 May 2013.
    15. Pellegrino, Gabriele & Savona, Maria, 2017. "No money, no honey? Financial versus knowledge and demand constraints on innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 510-521.
    16. Ghisetti, Claudia & Pontoni, Federico, 2015. "Investigating policy and R&D effects on environmental innovation: A meta-analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 57-66.
    17. D’Este, Pablo & Iammarino, Simona & Savona, Maria & von Tunzelmann, Nick, 2012. "What hampers innovation? Revealed barriers versus deterring barriers," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 482-488.
    18. Gabriele Pellegrino, 2015. "Barriers to innovation: can firm age help lower them?," Working Papers 2015/3, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    19. Christoph P. Kiefer & Pablo Del Río González & Javier Carrillo‐Hermosilla, 2019. "Drivers and barriers of eco‐innovation types for sustainable transitions: A quantitative perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 155-172, January.
    20. Gabriele Pellegrino, 2018. "Barriers to innovation in young and mature firms," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 181-206, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    eco-innovation; barriers to innovation; firm behaviour.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • Q55 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Technological Innovation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:srt:wpaper:0614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Alessandro Palma (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.sustainability-seeds.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.