What drives environmental innovation? A meta-analysis

To clarify the drivers of environmental innovation, this study selected 50 independent samples from 49 publications to investigate the effects of four major factors-policy, market, resource capacity, and organizational characteristics-on environmental innovation using a meta-analysis, as well as demonstrating the moderating role of cultural background and industrial diversity. The results show that both environmental regulations and government subsidies positively promote environmental innovation and that cultural background and industrial diversity do play moderating roles in how environmental regulations impact environmental innovation. Furthermore, customer demand is also shown to have a positive impact on environmental innovation and is moderated by industrial diversity. However, market concentration is not shown to significantly affect environmental innovation. The results also show that knowledge sources, technological capabilities, organization's performance, and environmental management systems positively influence environmental innovation. Additionally, cultural background plays a moderating role between an organization's performance and environmental innovation, and industrial diversity can moderate technological capability and environmental innovation. Finally, the size of an organization is shown to positively affect environmental innovation and is also moderated by cultural background.