How green technological innovation ability influences enterprise competitiveness

Can an enterprise's green technological innovation ability enhance its competitiveness? This topic has not been studied extensively, there is no consensus in the existing literature, and there is no clear indication of the underlying mechanism and processes. In this research, we establish a conceptual framework to describe the effect of an enterprise's green technological innovation ability on enterprise competitiveness. This model uses product differentiation as the mediating variable and the enterprise scale as the moderating variable. This study is based on a hierarchical regression analysis of the energy conservation and environmental protection data from enterprises listed in China from 2011 to 2016. Our findings show that, in general, the green technological innovation ability of an enterprise has a significant positive effect on the enterprise's competitiveness, but different components have different effects on enterprise competitiveness. Product differentiation has a mediating effect on the relationship between an enterprise's green technological innovation ability and competitiveness, and its mediating effect differs depending on the components of the green technological innovation ability. The enterprise scale positively moderates the relationship between the enterprise's green technological innovation ability and enterprise competitiveness through product differentiation. This research provides a new analytical framework to understand the mechanism underlying the effect of an enterprise's green technological innovation ability on enterprise competitiveness, and it also provides useful insights into the development of green technological innovation competitiveness and the establishment of new policies by the government to improve the regulatory framework for green development. •We describe the effect of an enterprise's green technological innovation ability on enterprise competitiveness.•We differentiate the different effects of different types of green technology innovation capabilities.•We analyze the regulating effect of enterprise scale when enterprise's green technological innovation ability influences enterprise competitiveness.•We show a new framework to learn how an enterprise's green technological innovation ability affects enterprise competitiveness.