This presentation is based on a paper co-authored by Valentina De Marchi, Roberto Grandinetti and James J. Cordeiro.

In recent years, the heightened importance of the environmental agenda has increasingly placed environmental innovations (EI) in the forefront of policy maker and corporate action. While extant literature has analyzed mainly external factors driving EI adoption, we emphasize salient firm-level factors, using data from the 2008 Community Innovation Survey (CIS) on Italian manufacturing firms that specifically addresses EI. We further contribute to the literature by distinguishing between different categories of production-related and product-related EIs. In addition, responding to recent calls for research on environmental CSR at multiple levels, we investigate industry-level regulatory environment (ETS), growth, and pollution prevention proactiveness.

Our econometric estimations indicate that size is positively related to the introduction of any kind of EI, and that foreign ownership is linked with a greater propensity to introduce EI, while exporting has no effect. Also, firms that perform R&D activities and have innovation capacity, that acquire relevant machinery or knowledge and perform training are more likely to be green innovators but such activities may be substitutive. Firm-level characteristics appear to be more important than industry specialization in explaining green innovation propensity and their impact appears to vary across EI types. At the industry-level we find that the regulatory intensity associated with the industry as well as the industry’s pollution prevention proactiveness are significant predictors of the propensity to introduce EI.

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This seminar has been jointly organized by FEEM and IEFE, Bocconi University.