An empirical study on the correlation between environmental design implementation and business competitive advantages in Taiwan's industries

Abstract Environmental protection is an important topic in the 21st century. Environmental design has become an integral part of corporate perpetual growth. In pursuit of economic development and environmental protection, enterprises should focus more on effective environmental design activities, and thus achieve the goal of perpetual growth. This research attempts to study the impact of environmental strategies and environmental design activities on environmental design implementation and in turn the impact of environmental design implementation on business competitive advantages. In this research, the intermediate variable, ‘industry group and enterprise scale’, is considered. A theoretical correlation model is developed based on various discussions on relevant theories and literature. The empirical analysis results on ISO 14001 certified enterprises and firms qualified for environmental protection standards in Taiwan show that the internal motivation for environmental design has a significant effect on environmental design implementation. Communication with related interest groups, continuous education and persistent innovation could all substantially impact environmental design implementation. The better the communication with related interest groups, or the higher the education with environment-related knowledge, the more successful the environmental design implementation. Furthermore, environmental design implementation has a fundamentally significant effect on business competitive advantages. The ‘more successful environmental design implementation results in greater competitive advantages’ hypothesis is statistically tested and proven in this research. The two intermediate variables, industry group and enterprise scale do not show noticeable impacts on environmental design and business competitive advantages.

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