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Eco-Activity and Innovativeness: What Is Their Relation to Environmental Performance in Consumer Firms and Industrial Firms?

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The Dynamics of Environmental and Economic Systems

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Abstract

This chapter examines the link between environmental performance, corporate social performance and innovativeness for consumer and industrial firms, using company data on R&D, environmental and corporate social performance from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini (KLD) database for US-based firms. We find empirically that during the period from 1999 to 2008, there has been an increase in environmental action, especially since 2004. A positive correlation is found to exist between environmental and non-environmental social performance in many dimensions and a positive but weak link between environmental performance and R&D per employee or unit of sales. This chapter shows that there is a difference between consumer and industrial firms in terms of the evolution of eco-activities and environmental impact. Contrary to what we expected, industrial firms undertook more product-related eco-activities than consumer firms. Industrial firms also showed a greater increase in process-related eco-activity. The increase in eco-activity went with an increase in eco-impact in both company types, suggesting that environmental action did not arrest environmental degradation overall.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    By improved eco-impact, we mean that the level of pollution and hazardous waste is reduced.

  2. 2.

    Here, innovativeness is R&D expenditure per employee. For R&D expenditure per turnover, the numbers vary, but the underlying result remains the same.

  3. 3.

    Outliers were excluded in order to have a Mahalanobis distance below 13.82 (Pallant 2007). We also checked for multicollinearity in the explanatory variables and the normal distribution of the errors.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. mgm consulting partners GmbH, Holländischer Brook 2, 20457, Hamburg, Germany

    Nicoline Oehme

  2. UNU-MERIT and ICIS, Maastricht University, Keizer Karelplein 19, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    René Kemp

Authors
  1. Nicoline Oehme
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  2. René Kemp
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to René Kemp .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department of Economics, Roma Tre University, Via Silvio D'Amico 77, Rome, 00145, Italy

    Valeria Costantini

  2. , Department of Economics, Institutions an, University of Ferrara, Via Voltapaletto 11, Ferrara, 44100, Italy

    Massimiliano Mazzanti

Appendices

Appendix A

Table 7.7 Correlation innovativeness and eco-activity
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Table 7.8 Correlation innovativeness and eco-impact
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Appendix B

Table 7.9 Correlation innovativeness and product-related eco-activity
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Table 7.10 Correlation innovativeness and process-related eco-activity
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Table 7.11 Correlation innovativeness and product-related eco-impact
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Table 7.12 Correlation innovativeness and process-related eco-impact
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Oehme, N., Kemp, R. (2012). Eco-Activity and Innovativeness: What Is Their Relation to Environmental Performance in Consumer Firms and Industrial Firms?. In: Costantini, V., Mazzanti, M. (eds) The Dynamics of Environmental and Economic Systems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5089-0_7

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