Environmental Orientation and Green Innovation Performance: Evidence from Tourism SMEs in the Digital Transformation Era
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66635/6anx0q07Keywords:
Tourism, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), commercialisation, sustainability, digitalization, innovationAbstract
The continued growth of the tourism industry has been accompanied by increasing expectations for businesses to operate in environmentally responsible ways. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this has created a more demanding and competitive business environment. The background of this study constructs and analyzes an integrated framework explaining how environmental commitment is translated into better performance in green innovation. Rather than considering environmental orientation as a direct inspiration source for innovation, the study focuses on green knowledge acquisition and digital transformation as complementary organizational processes that enable the transformation of the values adopted into innovative ways of working. The strategic capability of digital orientation is also integrated as an enabler of how effective this transformation process is. Empirical data were collected from a two-wave online survey of manufacturing SMEs within the tourism value chain and analysed in the framework of Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). This analysis implies that firms with a strong environmental profile are better equipped to carry out green innovations as they are keener on acquiring knowledge about the environment and building up their digital competence. In addition, the findings show that these two organisational capabilities work together to account for the effect of environmental orientation on innovation benefits and are not independent of each other. The organisations that are more digitally oriented are better equipped to convert the acquired green knowledge into effective digital transformation actions, which help reinforce sustainable innovation actions. The study adds to the growing literature on sustainable innovation because it shows that there is a necessity to consider environmental and digital strategy as complementary organisational capabilities. The results can motivate managers to coordinate and integrate environmental aspects with knowledge creation and information technology endeavors to increase the innovation output and competitiveness of the tourism-related manufacturing sector in the long term.
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