The Influence of Environmental Policy on Innovative Behaviour : An Econometric Study

The political and scientific debate related to a sustainable development has stressed above all the importance of environmental innovations with respect to exploiting resources, to production, consumption and disposal. Such environmental innovations can: *develop, introduce and apply new ideas, behaviour patterns, products and processes; and then, *reduces the environmental burden or contribute to ecologically specified sustainable targets. During the past 20 years, innovation has taken place primarily in end-of-pipe technologies, which has already resulted in considerable reductions in environmental pressure. However, the demanding criteria for sustainable development cannot be met by this alone. In future it will therefore be crucial to work towards additional technological change and a shift in the direction taken by progress up to now, through the development and application of new, sustainable manufacturing techniques and products. Policy planners and decision-makers are now faced with the central question of how an innovation-friendly regulatory regime of envi-ronmental policy approaches looks like. The paper examines the determinants that influence the environmental innovation behaviour of companies in Germany in a multivariate context by using the environmental innovation behaviour of companies in Germany in a multivariate context by using data from the Mannheimer Innovationspanel 1993, which was part of the Community Innovation Survey. The objective is to analyse the general structures of the determinants of environmental innovation, as well as the specific impact of environmental policy instruments as an integral part of this framework. The pressure of environmental policy instruments on the innovation behaviour of companies is reproduced by indicators, which are investigated in a written survey at the level of the German Chambers of Commerce. Because of the complexity of the system of determinants and the difficulties in isolating the effects of environmental policy instruments, the study in hand is an explorative work in a methodological and empirical matter