Owners and Ecological Corporate Entrepreneurship: The Effect of Family Ownership on Eco-innovation

This study examines the effect of family ownership on firm-level engagement in eco-innovation. Building on institutional theory and socioemotional wealth theory, we develop a model outlining the mediating role of concern for company reputation gains and the moderating role of the owning-family’s transgenerational intentions and of its local embeddedness. Our model is tested with data from the German part of the Community Innovation Survey using nonlinear moderated mediation analysis. We find support for most of our hypotheses and discuss key academic and practical implications