China’s logistics green competitiveness promotion path: a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach

Increasingly serious environmental problems are forcing many industries to gradually turn to green development, and green competitiveness has become the vision of policymakers and industry practitioners. The impact of the development of the logistics industry on the environment cannot be ignored, but the promotion path of its green competitiveness has not been fully studied. Based on Porter’s diamond model, this study uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore the condition configuration of the logistics industry in 30 provincial regions in mainland China to enhance green competitiveness and effectively combine theory with practice. Factors considered include logistics technology innovation ability, logistics market demand, proportion of tertiary industry, management level of logistics enterprises, environmental regulation, and the internet. The results show that the green competitiveness of the logistics industry is influenced by many factors and cannot be sufficiently explained by a single factor. The findings point to three paths with equal authenticity to improve the green competitiveness of the logistics industry. By comparing the same types of high configuration and low configuration, this study finds that environmental regulation is an important external driving force for regions with low added value of output products, and for regions with certain geographical advantages and numerous logistics enterprises, in addition to the management level of logistics enterprises, support from the internet is also particularly important in improving the green competitiveness of logistics. These findings can provide a practical reference for the promotion of green competitiveness in the logistics industry in different regions.