Driving factors for eco-innovation orientation: meeting sustainable growth in Tunisian agribusiness

The agricultural and agri-food sectors have substantial environmental impacts due to the great volumes of food, energy, water, and packaging waste that these businesses generate. Eco-innovations present an important opportunity to mitigate this effect. Even though eco-innovation seeks to reduce environmental damage in the food and agri-food sectors, researchers have paid slight attention to the role of eco-innovation in agribusiness; however, several insights suggest that it would be worthwhile to examine the motivation drivers toward the adoption of eco-innovations. The current study sheds light on the driving forces of eco-innovation and its impact on sustainable business growth. This paper tests a set of hypothesized relationships that focus on a sample of 306 Tunisian enterprises. We harness structural equation modelling to examine the relationship between the driving factors of eco-innovation and enterprises’ sustainable business growth by analysing the eco-innovation strategy's mediating effects. The findings reveal: (1) regulatory-side drivers constitute the most influential factor that motivates entrepreneurs to adopt an eco-innovation strategy, (2) there is a positive relationship between eco-innovation strategy and enterprises’ sustainable business growth, and (3) eco-innovation strategy plays a fully mediating role between the driving factors and enterprises’ sustainable business growth. The present study led us to consider that an entrepreneur with an emotional attachment to the environment is designed as a decisive driver for eco-innovation.