Why Do Firms Adopt Green Design?: Organizational Opportunity, Organizational Resources, Costs, or Regulation

This paper evaluates four explanations for industrial facilities' incorporation of environmental considerations in their product designs (i.e., "green design"): organizational opportunity, organizational resources, cost reduction, and environmental regulatory pressure. Initial analyses of facility-level workplace practice and environmental data support all four explanations. Facilities vigorously practicing cost reduction, with greater opportunities and resource bases to engage in green design, and facing more intense environmental regulatory pressure are substantially more likely to adopt green design. The results of multivariate analyses, however, indicate that adoption of green design is primarily determined by organizational opportunities and resources.