Environmental management practices: good or bad news for innovations delivering environmental benefits? The moderating effect of market characteristics

摘要

We examine empirically whether environmental management practices (environmental audits, ISO 14001 standard, etc.) promote (or not) further innovation in the environmental domain. Using a large sample of French firms (N=4114) and three-stage least square (3SLS) model, we find that environmental management practices influence positively the decision of firms to introduce innovations delivering environmental benefits along both the production and consumption cycles. Nevertheless, this positive relation is moderated by market characteristics. The findings indicate that environmental management practices promote (respectively, promote less) further environmental innovations when the market of their main activity is growing (respectively, uncertain or competitive).