The Contribution of Technological and Non-Technological Innovation to Environmental Performance. An Analysis with a Complementary Approach

Jennifer González-Blanco, Jose Luis Coca-Pérez and Manuel Guisado-González
Additional contact information
Jennifer González-Blanco: Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Vigo, Campus Universitario, s/n, 36310 Vigo, Spain
Jose Luis Coca-Pérez: Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, University of Extremadura, Av. de la Universidad, s/n, 10071 Cáceres, Spain
Manuel Guisado-González: Department of Financial Economics and Accounting, University of Extremadura, Av. de la Universidad, s/n, 10071 Cáceres, Spain

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-26

Abstract: In this study, we pursue two objectives. First, we analyse the influence of product, process, and non-technological innovation on environmental performance. Second, we explore the existence of complementarities or substitutabilities between the different combinations of these three types of innovations to learn which combinations improve or worsen environmental performance. The analyses were performed using data from the 2013 Technological Innovation Panel (PITEC) for Spanish manufacturing companies. We use the two-stage least-squares method as an instrumental variable estimator, which allows us to control the endogeneity and obtain consistent estimators. Our findings indicate that product innovation and process innovation have a negative influence on environmental performance. Likewise, we have also found that the simultaneous implementation of product innovation and process innovation is unconditionally substitutive and that the joint implementation of process innovation and non-technological innovation is conditionally substitutive. This result reinforces the position of those researchers who have pointed out that the association between a greater technology orientation and a better firm environmental performance is probably too simplistic. Finally, it should be emphasized that only non-technological innovation contributes to achieving better environmental performance and that the joint implementation of product innovation and non-technology innovation is conditionally complementary.

Keywords: product innovation; process innovation; non-tecnological innovation; environmental performance; complementarity approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/4014/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/11/4014/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:11:p:4014-:d:180069

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().