Estimation of sustainable innovation performance in European Union countries: Based on the perspective of energy and environmental constraints

Abstract

European Union (EU) has long attached importance to innovation strategies, from the Lisbon strategy to the EU 2020 strategy. The evaluation of sustainable innovation efficiency (SIE) of EU countries aids in defining institutional and policy actions to enhance environmentally friendly innovation in the EU, and is essential and appropriate. Through the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, this paper measures the SIE in 27 EU countries, from 2000 to 2017, considering industrial waste and total energy consumption. The results show that the sustainable innovation efficiency among countries differs significantly. Only eight countries consistently have an efficient value of 1 during this period. The EU as a whole has a high efficiency value of 0.7403, but there are obvious differences among the five regions. Efficiency values in the north and south are consistently higher than the EU’s average efficiency value. The results also show that undesirable outputs lead to the reduction of innovation efficiency in most regions. The findings also provide policy makers with useful decision support insights for regional sustainable innovation, energy conservation and emission reduction policies. In addition, sustainable innovation governance should continue to be strengthened to promote and support the improvement of SIE.

Keywords

• Innovation efficiency
• Undesirable outputs
• Slack-based measure model
• EU countries