Drivers and obstacles towards eco-innovation of european entrepreneurs

Abstract

This dissertation sets out to investigate drivers and obstacles towards eco-innovation for entrepreneurial small and medium-sized businesses, which have been hitherto largely neglected in academia. Recently, increasing attention for eco-innovation resulted in scholarly research in the form of various small-scale data collections and case studies. Utilizing the European Commission’s Flash Eurobarometer survey 315 with 5.222 responses, this dissertation provides one of the first European large-scale data analyses, complemented by 22 eco-innovative entrepreneur interviews. The profound triangulation enables a comprising insight into results of the probit regression model. This approach aims to identify clearly distinct drivers and obstacles, as well as ensembles of obstacles, towards eco-innovation of European entrepreneurs based on products/services, processes, and organizational methods, following Kemp and Pearson’s contribution to the scholarly field of eco-innovation. In this manner, the analysis identified eleven drivers and eight obstacles, as well as five ensembles of obstacles towards eco-innovation of European entrepreneurs. Based on the findings of this dissertation, policy-makers should consider an improvement of market and customer information access for European entrepreneurs, increasing the consumer awareness about eco-innovations, effective enforcing precise and standardized regulations across EU member states, initiation of subsidies that have long-term environmental beneficial effect among affected industries, and initiatives which gear up research institutes and universities for commercially driven development activities of more evolved SMEs. With this in mind, this dissertation derives new and deeper insights about which differentiated drivers and obstacles towards eco-innovations of European entrepreneurs are perceived and also how to address them.

Date of Award	13 Feb 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Susana Frazão Pinheiro (Supervisor)