Environmental innovation practices and green product innovation performance: A perspective from organizational climate

Abstract

Green product innovation is critical to a firm's sustainability. Some studies have explored how to enhance a firm's green production innovation. In this research, we construct and test a research model for exploring the influence of environmental innovation practices (EIP) on green innovation performance, and we investigate the mechanisms underlying this relationship. Based on organizational creativity theory, we propose and test the hypothesis that EIP can affect creativity climate and green creativity, which in turn enhance green product innovation performance. Using survey data from 147 companies in China, we find that EIP directly and positively affect green creativity and indirectly influence green product innovation performance via green creativity. Thus, green creativity partially mediates the link between EIP and green product innovation performance. Our finding also indicates that creativity climate positively affect green creativity. Green product innovation performance is positively affected by creativity climate but not directly affected by EIP. The results further demonstrate that creativity climate fully mediates the link between EIP and green product innovation performance. Our findings suggest that firm' managers should shape the organizational creativity climate and encourage green creativity to enhance their firm's sustainability. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications, which can promote the firm's sustainability through environmental policy.