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Policies to Promote Eco-innovation: Results for Selected CEE Countries and Germany

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Competitiveness of CEE Economies and Businesses

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Abstract

Eco-innovation should be identified as one of the main pillars for European countries, including those from the Central Eastern European (CEE) region. For this reason, the aim of this chapter is to present a comparative cross-country analysis of the relationship between eco-innovation and its main drivers for firms from selected CEE countries. The chapter provides a special insight into the role of public financial support and government regulations in stimulating eco-innovation performance. The empirical part is based on micro-data for CIS 2006–2008 for firms from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania and Germany. The results of stepwise regression show that financial support for innovation activities has rather limited role in fostering eco-innovation, whereas existing environmental regulations are regarded by enterprises from CEE region as their most important driver. In Germany, country ranked higher in Eco-Innovation Scoreboard than the other above mentioned countries, the spectrum of equally important forces is much more enhanced. This leads to the conclusion that government efforts have to cover not only changes in existing environmental policies, but set the ground for the creation of a legal and institutional environment which promotes a model of green economy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The terms eco-innovation, environmental-friendly innovation, environmental innovation are used interchangeably in this chapter.

  2. 2.

    The indicators in the Eco-Innovation Scoreboard are divided into five components covering eco-innovation inputs (including early stage investments in clean technology), eco-innovation activities (such as the percentage of firms taking resource efficiency measures), eco-innovation outputs (such as relevant patents), resource efficiency performance, and socio-economic outputs (such as data on turnover, employment and exports); for more information see: http://www.eco-innovation.eu.

  3. 3.

    The 2013 version of the Eco-IS consists of 16 indicators from 9 different data sources, which were the same indicators used for the 2012 version; 13 indicators were updated, with most indicators having their latest values for the years between 2010 and 2012; for more information see: http://www.eco-innovation.eu.

  4. 4.

    CIS 2008 micro data for 16 European countries (namely: BG-CY-CZ-DE-EE-ES-HU-IE-LT-LV-PT-RO-SI-SK-NO) obtained based on the “Contract on the use of Community Innovation Survey (CIS) micro data for research purposes – CIS/2012/13” signed on 18.10.2012 between European Commission Eurostat, Unit B1 and the Warsaw School of Economics.

  5. 5.

    Results for Bulgarian, Czech Republic and German enterprises were very similar and are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgment

This chapter was supported with funds provided by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for the World Economy Research Institute—a unit of the Collegium of the World Economy at the Warsaw School of Economics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Małgorzata Stefania Lewandowska PhD

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  1. Małgorzata Stefania Lewandowska PhD
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Correspondence to Małgorzata Stefania Lewandowska PhD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poznań, Poland

    Piotr Trąpczyński

  2. Poznań University of Economics and Business, Poznań, Poland

    Łukasz Puślecki

  3. SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Mirosław Jarosiński

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Lewandowska, M.S. (2016). Policies to Promote Eco-innovation: Results for Selected CEE Countries and Germany. In: Trąpczyński, P., Puślecki, Ł., Jarosiński, M. (eds) Competitiveness of CEE Economies and Businesses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39654-5_5

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