Is Environmental Innovation Worth It? The Case of the Civil Aviation Industry of Emerging Markets

This paper analyses the case of emerging markets by studying the impacts of the airline companies’ environmental innovations on airlines’ financial results and customers’ willingness to pay. Environmental innovations have been classified into technology based and market based innovations. It has been found that both types of innovations are proven to be positively related to airlines’ financial performance although the interaction between the two does not show significant causal relationship. As to customers’ willingness to pay, none of the two types of innovations not their interaction has been tested with significant causal relationship. As one of the first studies on this field of emerging markets, this paper fills the academic void, and its results and conclusions can provide some guidelines for airline companies operating within and beyond emerging markets.