Abstract
Eco-innovations that reduce the environmental effect of manufacturing and consumption are seen as critical components of sustainable development and a critical component of the transition to a circular economy. Food systems address the issue of food waste, which is generally acknowledged as a cost to the economy, the environment, and society. Eco-innovations seem to be critical for the food system's transformation to a more circular model centered on sustainable food production and processing. The goal of this paper was to determine the variables that influenced the introduction of product, process, organizational, and marketing innovations in European Union agri-food enterprises between 2012 and 2014. According to a preliminary analysis of the data, 57.40% of agribusinesses did not implement any form of innovation, which prompted the authors to study the difficulties surrounding innovation development over the 3-year reference period. Several key factors emerge as significant influences on the introduction of product innovations (0.055**); contractual requirements as significant influences on the introduction of process innovations (−0.081***); and environmental incentives as significant influences on the introduction of marketing innovations (0.062***). Additionally, product (0.704***) and process (1.051***) innovations tend to have a greater influence on enterprises' views of circular benefits. The investigation also demonstrates how enterprises and end users interpret the effect of various forms of innovation differently. Indeed, end users, in contrast to how enterprises understand it, believe that organizational (0.611***) and marketing (0.916***) innovations are critical in pursuing circular benefits.
Highlights
By 2030, the UN expects that the world’s population will demand at least 40% more water, 35% more food, and 50% more energy
The results reveal that the whole sample of enterprises and the sector of food, beverage, and tobacco enterprises provide significantly different outcomes
The most striking findings are to Spain and Bulgaria, which had the highest participation rates of 30.70 and 14.43%, respectively, while no food sector enterprises from Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Croatia, Lithuania, or Latvia participated in the questionnaire
Summary
By 2030, the UN expects that the world’s population will demand at least 40% more water, 35% more food, and 50% more energy. It is anticipated that worldwide food consumption will grow by 70% by 2050 (FAO, 2009), global energy consumption will increase by 25% by 2040 and global freshwater demand will increase by about 55% by 2050 (IEA, 2018). The purpose of transitioning to a circular economy is to obtain environmental benefits (Taranic et al, 2016), which include cost savings and market expansion, both of which result in further economic benefits via employment creation. As numerous scholars have argued (Carrillo-Hermosilla et al, 2010; Kemp, 2010; de Jesus et al, 2018; Prieto-Sandoval et al, 2018), the primary impediment to this transition is the growing need for innovation, which includes research on new technologies and clear guidance on their use, policy support for establishing appropriate regulatory frameworks, and providing the appropriate incentives for technology adoption
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