The creation of cleantech startups at the local level: the role of knowledge availability and environmental awareness

Giancarlo Giudici, Massimiliano Guerini and Cristina Rossi-Lamastra ()
Additional contact information
Giancarlo Giudici: Politecnico di Milano School of Management
Massimiliano Guerini: Politecnico di Milano School of Management
Cristina Rossi-Lamastra: Politecnico di Milano School of Management

Small Business Economics, 2019, vol. 52, issue 4, No 4, 815-830

Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we explore which local factors affect the creation of cleantech startups in a geographical area. Specifically, we note that these startups combine innovation and attention to the environment. Thus, we consider two primary sets of local factors: the availability of scientific and technological knowledge and the environmental awareness of local governments and communities as the main drivers of the creation of cleantech startups. Using a dataset of 393 cleantech startups created between 2012 and 2014 and extracted from the Italian official database of innovative startups, we estimate negative binomial regressions whose dependent variable is the number of cleantech startups created in each of the 110 Italian provinces. The results highlight that both the local availability of scientific and technological knowledge and the local environmental awareness are crucial determinants of cleantech entrepreneurship in a geographical area. We discuss the implications of these results for policymakers who intend to stimulate this type of entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Cleantech startups; Local knowledge; Environmental awareness; Firm creation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 O32 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-017-9936-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:sbusec:v:52:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11187-017-9936-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-017-9936-9

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().