Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Journal of Cleaner Production 16S1 (2008) S7eS13www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

General wisdom concerning the factors affecting the adoptionof cleaner technologies: a survey 1990e2007

Carlos Montalvo*

TNO Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, Schoemakerstraat 97, P.O. Box 6030, 2600 JA Delft, The Netherlands

Available online 26 November 2007

Abstract

Cleaner technologies (CT) have recently received much attention in diverse media and policy agendas. This comes out of the clear role theyplay in environmental protection and sustainability and the large potential to contribute to economic growth and competitiveness. The realizationof both potentials depends on the level diffusion and exploitation achieved, today very low. This article presents a selective survey of papers thattoday represent the general wisdom concerning the factors affecting adoption as a primary condition to diffusion and exploitation of CT. Thepaper helps to clarify the challenges facing diffusion modelers and policy makers when dealing with policy design, assessing the levels of dif-fusion achieved as well as the factors affecting diffusion of a particular technology. The paper ends outlining further research need in the field.� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Technology adoption; Technology diffusion; Diffusion modeling; Technology policy; Environmental policy

1. Introduction

During the first years of the of the 21st century the attentiongiven to the state of the environment e at both local and globallevel e has increased dramatically compared to concern in thelast years of the 20th century. We are seeing not only popular,commercial films,1 but also national governments enactingpolicy directed to increasing awareness of issues, such as sys-temic pollution and climate change [1].2 It is only in the mostrecent years that governments have been regarding technolog-ical innovation as the solution to the challenge of environmen-tal degradation and a way of boosting the competitiveness ofnational economies [2,3]. Seeing technological innovation asthe main means of providing environmental sustainabilitypresents two major policy issues. The first concerns the factthat despite the raised awareness of the environmental

* Tel.: þ31 15 269 5490.

E-mail address: carlos.montalvo@tno.nl1 See movie e ‘‘An inconvenient truth’’ http://www.climatecrisis.net/ and

movie e ‘‘The 11th hour’’ http://wip.warnerbros.com/.2 See Environmental Knowledge Hub, http://ekh.unep.org/?q¼ node/2042,

visited 10.09.2007.

0959-6526/$ - see front matter � 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2007.10.002

problems caused by production and consumption patternsthere is little acceptance that the current technological stockpresents serious anomalies in terms of infringement of the ba-sic laws of thermodynamics, anomalies that extend to the new,so-called alternative technologies (e.g., photovoltaic cells, fuelcells, bio-fuels, etc.) [4,5]. The second issue relates to the myr-iad factors affecting the diffusion of new cleaner technologiesand how these factors interact, which requires appropriate policymixes in order to minimise negative synergies and conflicts.Often potentially relevant factors related to the adoption ofnew technologies have not been included in the analysis. Thefactors may differ between sectors but this has not been system-atically studied. Often the study focuses on one industry. Thislimits generalisations and insights for policy.

In this paper, we address this second issue in an attempt tomake the adoption of new technologies by individual users,and their diffusion across the economy, more transparent byshowing the dependency between the various factors involvedand their likely interrelation. The paper makes clear the diffi-culty to generate a dynamic diffusion model that includes allthe relevant variables. The objective is to highlight the chal-lenge involved in generating policies that promote the diffu-sion of cleaner technologies at the aggregated level. If

S8 C. Montalvo / Journal of Cleaner Production 16S1 (2008) S7eS13

diffusion is the outcome of the micro-decisions influenced bymicro-, meso- and macro-contexts [6,7], in order to understandthe diffusion process, we must ask what are the relevant adop-tion variables (stimuli, facilitating factors and barriers) andwhat changes in the adoption environment will induce firmsto adopt an innovation at a particular moment in time? In otherwords, what drives or hampers the diffusion of innovations incleaner production at firm level?

A number of authors have contributed to the debate over thebarriers and drivers to innovation in cleaner technologies thathas taken place in the last decade. However, despite this in-creased interest from scholars and policy-makers little system-atic and comprehensive work linking the drivers and barriers toactual adoption at firm level (see e.g., Ref. [8]) and diffusion atsector level (see e.g., Ref. [9]) has been done. These authorsestablished causality links and explored the interactions be-tween drivers in order to prioritise and focus policy efforts topromote innovation in firms; however, they offer no insightsabout how to link adoption decisions to technology diffusioncurves at sector level. The approach of Van Wijk et al. [9] pres-ents a similar structure (or clustering of drivers and barriers)focusing on the exploration of barriers at sector level. This ap-proach has not been validated; it does not explore interactionsbetween drivers, but offers methodological insights about howto link drivers and barriers to diffusion patterns. Interactionsbetween (clusters of) drivers are examined in Montalvo et al.[10], which empirically validated a model to explore and deter-mine the factors that could influence innovation in cleanertechnologies at firm level, in the European context.

This review follows the approach in Montalvo [11], whichclassifies factors affecting innovations in cleaner technologiesat firm level. These are organised along the following dimensions:government policy, economics, markets, communities and socialpressure, attitudes and social values, technological opportunitiesand technological capabilities and organisational capabilities.The structure of the present paper follows this classification.The survey shows some degree of overlap between the factorsaffecting the adoption of cleaner technologies at firm level.

2. Public policy

The literature on environmental policy recognises that oneof the major drivers of environmentally responsible behaviourin industry is the intervention of public policy in the form of en-vironmental policy and enforcement of regulations, (e.g., Refs.[12e20]). The application of government policies has rangedfrom direct command-and-control to voluntary programmesto economic instruments [21,22]. The last traditionally includescharges and taxes, emission charges, user charges, productcharges or taxes, administrative charges or fees, subsidies, de-positerefund schemes, marketable permit arrangements, finan-cial enforcement incentives or financial assistance [22].Economic instruments generally have been associated withstandards limiting the amount of residuals or hazardous wastereleased to the environment through end-of-pipe technologiesor waste management practices. There is no doubt that pollu-tion control has brought environmental improvements and

that enforcement of the regulations has been the main meansthrough which they have been achieved. This, and the factthat regulation in relation to technical change is frequentlymentioned in the literature, can be misleading in the contextof clean technologies (i.e., prevention of residuals and wastecreation through organisational and technical change).

Government intervention under the traditional policy ap-proaches mentioned above has not been successful in promot-ing pollution prevention at source [23e29]. This is commonlyacknowledged at government level. It is also accepted that theway in which environmental policies have been designed andenforced does not particularly favour the development andadoption of cleaner technologies in industry (e.g., Refs.[30e33]). One of the main reasons for this is that emissionsand discharge rate standards provide little or no incentive togo beyond the required standard reduction and, thus, theyfail to promote and sustain research and development (R&D)and investment in innovation. Regulations might produce in-centives for firms to pre-empt future changes in regulations,stricter standards [20,34,35] or future liabilities [36], but expe-rience shows that they do little to promote and encouragedevelopment of continuous environmental performance im-provement through innovation.

Innovation in products and processes aimed at reducingpollution at source are generally regarded as being one way toimprove not only aspects of product and process performance,but also economic efficiency and competitiveness (e.g., Refs.[37,18,19,38]). It is also now received wisdom that technologi-cal change is critical to achieving long-term and cost-effectivesolutions to the environmental problems generated by industry(e.g., Refs. [39e45,20,32]). If innovation in cleaner technolo-gies brings so many benefits why is that covenants, eco-label-ling, intellectual property protection, eco-taxes, internationalagreements and law, etc., have had such limited success in pro-moting innovation? To date, there are no clear trends in thetypes of relationships among diffusion of cleaner technologyand the levels and forms of public intervention [8,2].

What about the effects of policies based on the notion ofBest Available Techniques (BATs) such as the European Inte-grated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive (96/61/EC)?Unlike pollution control best available technologies and tech-niques are sector specific, which requires sector and possiblyplant specific knowledge. This poses large and perhaps unreal-istic knowledge demands on authorities trying to regulatecleaner production [46]. This represents a major challengefor the regulatory authorities and government policy as thecurrent regulatory schemes are designed to promote ‘‘yester-day’s’’ technologies. Furthermore, it has been argued thatcurrent regulations will gradually become obsolete and coun-terproductive, and unable to induce process embedded innova-tion [47]. Thus, the impact of regulation could be negative ifthe conditions required to apply certain schemes are not appro-priate. Conversely, if government intervention takes the formof providing the right conditions and stimuli for firms tochange we could expect a positive relationship between regu-lation and the level of diffusion of cleaner technologies. Thenext sections provide some insights into other possible factors

S9C. Montalvo / Journal of Cleaner Production 16S1 (2008) S7eS13

promoting or hampering innovation and diffusion of cleanertechnologies.

3. Economics

As mentioned above innovation in cleaner technologies issupposed to bring many benefits to adopting firms. In the inno-vation literature economic risk (seen as possible gains or los-ses) and uncertainty are seen as central concepts determiningand organising innovative activity [48,49]. On the positiveside of risk some of the most frequent benefits mentioned areoff-setting part of the rising costs of compliance (e.g., Refs.[50e52,34]) and waste disposal [35]; saving of raw materialsvia waste or energy minimisation [53e55]; and higher qualityof products and efficiency gains (e.g., Refs. [34,56e60]). Forsectors producing intermediate goods economic opportunitiesmight arise derived from the access to new markets up-streamwhere consumers are willing to pay for e at least temporarily emore expensive, but more environmentally friendly products. Itcan be expected that firms facing these potential benefits mightbe more prone to adopt new cleaner technologies.

The downside of risk and uncertainty is related to the likeli-hoodeunlikelihood of appropriating the benefits of innovations[61], the timing and trade-off of investments in relation to busi-ness cycles, the age of current production processes and the pos-sible economic benefits rendered by adoption of newer anduntested new technologies [62,51,20]. Linked to these last arethe availability and access to capital markets. New technologiesin general tend to be more efficient in many respects e includ-ing environmental performance. Thus, there is little differencebetween investments aimed at increasing productivity, increas-ing quality or expanding capacity in order to compete, and thoseaimed at protecting the environment.

This lack of differentiation creates problems with respect tocapital access as: (1) investment banking protocols do not in-clude Clean Production definitions [33] and (2) there is a lackof expertise appropriate to evaluate the economic and financialaspects of cleaner production project efficiency and invest-ment [63]. The stock market indexes have begun to includelistings of eco-firms, which include firms whose environmen-tal sustainability is not clear.3 All these problems derived froma lack of preferential investment and fiscal schemes to promotecleaner production [46,63]. Some authors have mentioned thehuge potential of cleaner production to promote a new wave oflong-term growth. The logic behind such expectations is thatthere is a need for worldwide technological stock replacementand this has the potential to become one of the main economicmultipliers of the 21st century [32,30]. From the above discus-sion we might expect a positive relationship between the per-ceived economic consequences derived from innovativeactivities in cleaner technologies and their level of diffusionwithin an industrial sector.

3 NASDAQ Clean Edge U.S. Index (CLEN), NASDAQ Clean Edge U.S.

Liquid Series Index (CELS), and First Trust NASDAQ� Clean Edge� U.S.

Liquid Series Index Fund (QCLN).

4. Markets

In past years the environmental economics and manage-ment literature have characterised environmental problemsas ‘market failures’. These market failures have been charac-terised by the release of environmentally damaging externali-ties [64,15]. Although market failures in relation to theenvironment are still dominant, reports in have consistently in-dicated that, in some cases, the market has already started toplay an important role in promoting environmental responsive-ness in industry. In general, the major market driving forcesreported concern consumers with heightened environmentalawareness (e.g., reported by Refs. [36,52,65e67]). But thereare other factors that might influence the diffusion of cleanertechnologies. For example, firms confronting more heteroge-neous, hostile and dynamic markets can be expected to adoptbranding and to make efforts to entice consumers to use andgain social legitimacy from more environmentally friendlyproducts [68,61,69].

Similarly, firms operating in countries with lax environ-mental regulations, but serving mature global markets witha preference for environmentally sound products are morelikely to embrace cleaner technologies [13,34,55]. Further-more, global markets and supply chains can also play animportant role in providing the right or wrong signals concern-ing the international prices of raw materials and inputs [47].Industrial sectors in which prices of raw materials are highand which are experiencing demand for environmentallysound intermediate goods up-stream in the supply chain, couldbe expected to be more disposed to adopting more environ-mentally efficient production processes.

In general, we can expect a positive relationship betweenenvironmentally oriented market pressures and the level ofadoption in a specific sector. Similarly, we can expect a positiverelationship between market pressures and perceived economicrisks. Firms facing consistent demands from their customers,for sound environmental products in the short- and medium-term might consider investing in cleaner technologies for thelonger-term. Furthermore, we can foresee a positive relation-ship between the attitudes of top management and marketpressures.

5. Communities and social pressure

In general the role of communities and the social pressuresreferred to in the literature are represented by the levels ofawareness of a variety of stakeholders concerning environmen-tal and sustainability issues and how active they are in pushingfor change in industrial environmental behavioural trends.Those stakeholders who might potentially be pushing forcleaner production could be within firms. For example, inves-tors and shareholders might exert pressure for change [70,71]or senior staff may try to increase the morale of employees bydemonstrating greater environmental awareness [72,8,73]. Inthis respect public image and social legitimacy in relation to en-vironmental behaviours are factors that have been mentioned asmotivating firms to embrace cleaner production [58,61].

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Experience has shown that external stakeholders play animportant role in promoting sound environmental behaviour.In general, it seems that local communities are concernednot only about the environment but also about human healthhave in the past been strict ‘watchdogs’ and are continuingto fulfil this function [51,74]. More broadly public pressureand demands from consumer groups, NGOs and the politicalGreen Parties are all promoters of environmental protection(e.g., Refs. [72,9,36,51,34,75,76,55]). It is important to men-tion that there is little empirical evidence concerning therole played by the various stakeholders in the promotion ofcleaner production specifically. Huhtala [33] pointed out thatone factor restricting a more decisive participation of diversestakeholders (for example, in the financing community) isthe lack of a clear understanding of what the concept ofcleaner production entails and encompasses. In terms of the re-lationship between diffusion of cleaner production and the roleof local and international communities and social pressure it isclear that we can expect this to be positive. The stronger thesocial demand for clean production the stronger the likelihoodthat diffusion will occur.

6. Attitudes and social values

People’s attitudes have been defined as the predisposition toact based on the assessment of possible outcomes [77]. Simi-larly, social values have been seen as the criteria against whichpeople justify their actions [78]. By their mere definition bothconcepts have the potential to play an important role in leadingfirms and industry to embrace innovation in cleaner technolo-gies. Positive attitudes are likely to arise from the perceived orexpected good environmental and societal outcomes arisingfrom the adoption and diffusion of cleaner technologies. Theliterature linking attitudes and social values in decision-makers in industry is vast. Generally, it is believed that sus-tainable entrepreneurship lies mainly in the personality, ethosand position of high-ranking official and CEOs (e.g., Refs.[34,51,58,79e81]). Such entrepreneurship is believed to arisefrom an awareness of the salient environmental issues[82,46,50] and the perceived potential of cleaner technologiesto abate risk and environmental impacts [71,83].

All these factors are supposed to have the potential to influ-ence the predisposition of decision-makers in firms. This im-plies that the conduct and commitment of top managementto cleaner production are of great relevance to the diffusionof cleaner technologies [52]. As attitudes change, based onthe potential outcomes of the adoption and diffusion of cleanertechnologies, it is likely that there will be a stronger relation-ship between the perceived economic benefits and the risksthat investment in new technologies might entail for firms.Therefore, based on the above discussion, we can expect tofind a positive relationship between the attitudes of decision-makers in industry and the level of adoption in individualsectors.

A very positive attitude will indicate that there are condi-tions e within the firm and in its general context e promotingthe diffusion of cleaner technologies. It should be noted also

that a firm might have strong motivations (arising from gov-ernment policies, markets, economic opportunities, etc.) forpushing for the diffusion of cleaner production but still mightnot adopt new technologies, in either the short-term or thelong-term.

In the next section we try to provide some insight into theorigins of such a dissonance between drivers, firm commit-ment and willingness to engage in cleaner production and finaladoption of new technologies at firm level and diffusion atsector level.

7. Technological opportunities and capabilities

As mentioned above despite strong forces to induce industryto adopt new cleaner technologies, diffusion might advance ata very slow pace or not at all. This could be explained by thecapacity at the industry level to innovate and to change. Factorsmentioned in the literature explaining the capacity of a sectorto change include the following. At a high level of aggregationthere is dominance of specific technological paradigms andregimes bringing systemic technological path dependency[68]. The cost of replacing a complete production process insectors, such as iron and steel, cement, and pulp and paper, isextremely high. Due to the size of investments and longevityof production processes it is very likely that the diffusion ofnew processes will occur in an incremental way [53,84,60].There are similar problems in the decommissioning of currentstocks of artefacts and equipment at user and consumer levels(e.g., cars, fridges, electronic appliances, etc.).

Closely linked to the above is the stock of technological op-portunities of cleaner technologies that is available. The levelof awareness of the existence of such technological opportuni-ties and the degree of techno-economic attractiveness (i.e., ef-ficiency, quality, cost reductions, increased environmentalperformance, etc.) related to the natural cycle of technologicalstock replacement could be expected to play an important rolein their uptake [62,82,51,20,34,85].

Closely related to these technological opportunities are thefirm and sector level capabilities needed to actually adopt newtechnologies [56,44,86,8]. It has been reported that insufficientavailability of expertise in clean production (eco-design) [52],the current training and clean technology capacity building atthe sector level [62,33] and the insufficient understanding andexperience in cleaner production project development and im-plementation [63], play a role in the adoption of new cleanerproduction processes. These factors can be expected to be-come even more critical at the level of small- and medium-sized enterprises, where the firm strategy is frequentlya ‘one-man show’ and there is little R&D activity [46].

Finally, firms face the challenge of technological risk [8].The gains promised by new technologies have yet to material-ise, a situation that contrasts strongly with the perceived reli-ability of current, familiar operating processes. In the literatureon technology management it has been established that adop-tion or development of new production processes implies thecapacity to integrate new knowledge and large organisationalchange [83].

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8. Organisational capabilities

Organisational capabilities refer to the firm’s endowmentsand capabilities to carry out innovation [84]. These includethe level of knowledge and expertise in the specific new tech-nology [34,83]. The level of expertise might range from thepresence of abilities to purchase the appropriate machineryand equipment [33] to their operation and maintenance.When the knowledge is not present in the firm adoption willdepend on the firm’s capacity to overcome skill lock-in, andto unlearn and acquire new skills [86,66,60]. Conductingand promoting organisational change involves the principaleagent problem. That is, committed CEOs must have a high de-gree of self-efficacy and leadership, not only to sell the notionto shareholders but also to orchestrate behavioural change atshop floor level [79,8].

Another aspect related to the firm’s capabilities is the ca-pacity to engage in fruitful relationships across the productionchain and among end-users and suppliers. The capacity to out-source new knowledge through collaboration with suppliers,and end-user involvement, has received wide attention in theliterature [57,90,82,51,83,90]. Such collaborations at inter-firm level have been reported to be problematic in terms ofthreats to technology secrecy [46]. Finally, closely related tocollaboration amongst firms is the notion of inter- and intra-trade across the supply chain and its inherent power relations.The capacity to engage with and influence suppliers of tech-nology, materials and inputs has been reported as a strong de-terminant of innovation. This is especially the case inindustrial sectors close to large retail chains [91,61,82].

From the discussion on capabilities we can expect to findpositive relationships between the levels of technological op-portunities, and technological and organisational capabilitiesin firms, and the degree of cleaner technology adoption infirms and diffusion at sector level. We can expect a negativerelationship between technological factors and perceived eco-nomic benefits and risks at firm level. Similarly, becausea higher degree of control over the innovation process wouldreduce the level of technological risk and increase the chancesof success, we can expect a positive relationship between tech-nological and green organisational factors and attitudes at thedecision-making level.

9. Remarks

The factors affecting the uptake of cleaner technology pre-sented above are in line with the literature in the period 1993e2007. These factors are generic to all economic activities withthe particularity that in the studies reported the unit of analysishas primarily been the firm, i.e., the analyses are at the micro-economic level. Most of the factors identified in the empiricalliterature could be drivers and barriers to innovation depend-ing on the circumstances, time and contexts in which theyare considered. For example, regulatory frameworks are gener-ally seen as one of the main drivers of environmental technol-ogy adoption in industry in recent years. At the policy level itis being acknowledged that regulation based on prescriptions

of technology rather than on environmental performance slowsor hampers innovation related to radical innovation or changesin the production process. Similarly, the role of consumers isconsidered an important driver of innovation. On the onehand, consumer demands for environmentally friendly prod-ucts can be a strong driver. On the other hand, if a firm per-ceives that consumers have little willingness to pay for moreexpensive products, this might deter it from investing incleaner technologies. The signals from the market must bethe right ones.

The large number of factors surveyed above and barriersand drivers identified, make the feasibility of modelling thedecision to adopt in a dynamic fashion, a rather complextask. Most diffusion modelling exercises are conducted witha very few variables to describe the system being considered.The technology diffusion literature has for long been dividedbetween two streams of research: those looking at the patternsof diffusion using as a backbone a logistic model or other ep-idemic model, and those looking at the structure and processof adoption decision-making. One of the big challenges of dif-fusion research is to unify both strands of research in a coher-ent model. The results of trying to deal with the two types ofdata in these different strands of research are problematic. Thedata are different in nature; the data drawn on to look at diffu-sion patterns consist of revealed preferences (levels of sales,investment levels, installed equipment, market penetration,etc.) e so-called hard data. The stream looking at the decisionto adopt bases its quantitative analyses on expressed prefer-ences (opinions, judgements, rating and ranking, etc.) e so-called soft data. The problem of linking expressed preferencesto actual technology adoption or investments in innovation hasbeen solved recently [11,10], but the challenge of linking dif-fusion patterns requires further research and the availability ofcoupled longitudinal studies using both types of data remainsa problem. Once such data and studies are available it shouldbe possible to fully understand the patterns of technologicaldiffusion and its origins.

Acknowledgement

This work was partly funded by the European Commission6th Framework Program. Contract no. SSPI-CT-2003-502487(Project POPA-CTDA).

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