Sustainable development, environmental innovation and export firms: The moderating roles of external collaboration, creativity enhancement and internal development processes

Abstract

Export firms are vital to a country's economic development and are distinctively positioned to engage in environmentally sustainable innovation. We extend the resource-based view about the unique cross-border challenges faced by export firms and the advantage they can generate from engaging in sustainable development. Using a large sample of 4949 Taiwanese export firms, our main effects test confirms the link between export firms and environmentally sustainable innovation. Furthermore, we find that creativity enhancement processes and internal development processes positively moderate the relationship, whereas external collaboration processes negatively moderate it. We contribute to the literature on the contingent factors that explain environmentally sustainable innovation for export firms. Additional tests are presented and discussed along with policy implications, future research directions and conclusions.