Temporal cognition, environmental innovation, and the competitive advantage of enterprises

Environmental innovation is an important way for enterprises to comply with environmental regulations and satisfy consumer demands. Based on a review of the relevant literature, this study examined the relationships among temporal cognition, environmental innovation, and the competitive advantage of enterprises along the logic of 'cognition-behaviour-performance', also incorporating environmental dynamism into the research model from a contingency perspective. A total of 219 enterprises in China's manufacturing industry were selected as the study sample. Hierarchical regression analysis and Sobel testing yielded the following results: long-term orientation had a positive effect on environmental product innovation and environmental process innovation, whereas polychronicity had a positive effect only on environmental process innovation; environmental process innovation was conducive to the enterprise acquisition of advantages of low cost and differentiation, whereas environmental product innovation can only improve the differentiation advantage. This study also concludes that environmental dynamism positively moderates the relationship between environmental process innovation and the differentiation advantage. This paper may contribute scientific value to stakeholder theory and cognition theory.