企业生态创新与经济绩效的因果、路径和调节

本文选取2009-2015年中国上市公司样本研究生态创新的投资回收期、收益特征以及收益模式。通过倾向得分匹配法分析得出:生态产品和生态过程创新对经济绩效产生滞后两年的正向影响;市场因素(绿色采购、营销强度)和规制因素(规制强度、政府补贴)均能正向调节生态产品创新与经济绩效的关系,而生态过程创新的正向调节效应仅体现于政府补贴;获取经济收益的主要机制是市场扩张以及生产力提升,前者在获得政府绿色采购或高营销投入的生态产品创新企业中更为显著,而后者在政府补贴的生态过程创新企业中并不显著。在此基础上,提出了强化组织环境管理意识、提升营销差异化和可信性、推广完善政府绿色采购、组合优化规制工具的政策建议。

This study identifies a unique sample of listed companies from 2009 to 2015 engaging in eco-innovation and seeks empirical answers for when, who and how does it pays from eco-innovation. Through propensitity score matching, our findings suggest that both eco-product and eco-process innovation could have positive impacts on firm profitability with a delay about two years. In terms of the contingencies on these effects, market factors represented by government green procurement and advertising intensity and regulatory factors delegated by regulation intensity and subsidy would positively moderate the eco-product innovation/profitability link while the only significant moderator exists for eco-process innovation/financial performance association is subsidy. Furthermore, we investigate the mechanisms through which eco- innovation firms reap the desirable economic benefits. The panel regressions results indicate that market expansion and productivity improvement constitute two main drivers of the reported positive economic return. The former mechanism is more pronounced in the eco-product innovation firms either endowed with government green procurement orders or with high advertising intensity while the latter mechanism is not identifiable in eco-process innovation firms with government subsidy. Research implications are proposed in terms of strengthening awareness of organizational environmental management, enhancing marketing differentiation and credibility, promoting government green procurement, and optimizating regulatory tools.