The Effects of Voluntary Standards and Public Procurement Criteria on Environmental Product Innovation

The effects of public procurement requirements and
voluntary standards on environmental product innovation
Bastian Kriegera and Anne Rainvilleb
This version: May 2025
Abstract
Public procurement requirements and voluntary standards are increasingly used to foster
environmental product innovations. However, quantitative evidence on their individual and
joint effects is absent, and their conceptualization remains at an early stage. This paper makes
two contributions. First, it introduces the distinction between rigid threshold and flexible
benchmark uses of voluntary standards in public tenders, theorizing their opposing effects on
environmental product innovations. Second, using data from 5,127 firms in the 2021 German
Innovation Survey and applying linear probability models, it provides the first quantitative
analysis of their individual and joint effects across varying degrees of environmental
significance. Results show that public procurement requirements and voluntary standards
individually increase the probability of firms introducing environmental product innovations
with high environmental significance. However, their interaction reveals a negative effect –
discomplementarity – likely driven by rigid standard use, which offsets the effectiveness of
procurement requirements. For environmental product innovations with low environmental
significance, only voluntary standards exhibit a positive effect. These findings suggest that
voluntary standards might limit the capacity of public procurement to foster more radical or
disruptive environmental product innovations, while supporting more incremental
innovations when used independently.

Krieger, Bastian und Anne Rainville (forthcoming), The Effects of Voluntary Standards and Public Procurement Criteria on Environmental Product Innovation, Research Policy