SCIENCE@home

Eco-Efficiency Actions and Firm Growth in European SMEs

Elisenda Jové‐Llopis,Agustí Segarra‐Blasco

Published 2018 in Sustainability

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the effects of eco-efficiency actions on firm performance in terms of sales growth in an extensive sample of 11,336 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in 28 European countries. Our empirical results suggest that not all eco-strategies are positively related to better performance, at least not in the short term. We found that European companies using renewable energies, and recycling or designing products that are easier to maintain, repair, or reuse, perform better. Those that aim to reduce water or energy pollution, however, seemed to show a negative correlation to firm growth. Our results also indicate that high investment in eco-strategies improves firm growth, particularly in new members that joined the EU from 2004 onwards. Finally, we observed a U-shaped relationship between eco-strategies and firm growth, which indicates that a greater breadth of eco-strategies is associated with better firm performance. However, few European SMEs are able to either invest heavily or undertake multiple eco-strategies, thus leaving room for policy interventions.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2018

  • Venue

    Sustainability

  • Publication date

    2018-01-22

  • Fields of study

    Business, Economics, Environmental Science

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.3390/SU10010281
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-50 of 50 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-54 of 54 citing papers · Page 1 of 1