Open Eco-Innovation and Firm Performance: Sustainable Development Mediating Role Is the Solution?

Concern about the degradation of natural resources and the planet’s environment is an issue that is gaining more interest every day from the scientific, business and government community, especially in the development and implementation of business strategies that reduce the use of natural raw materials and pollution levels. In this sense, open eco-innovation activities are gaining attention in the literature as one of the business strategies that allow organizations to reduce environmental degradation and the use of raw materials. However, despite the growth in interest in the analysis of this topic, there are relatively few studies that have provided empirical evidence of its importance, in addition to the fact that little is known about the effects of eco-innovation activities. Open in the practices of sustainable development and at the level of business performance. Therefore, this research has as its main objective to fill this existing gap in the literature and provide robust empirical evidence, through an extensive review of the literature. Likewise, a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to a sample of 300 manufacturing companies from the five most important sectors in Mexico, analyzing the data set through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models using partial least squares (PLS-SEM). The results obtained suggest that open eco-innovation practices have a significant positive influence on both sustainable development practices and business performance of manufacturing companies, and, in turn, sustainable development practices substantially improve the effects of innovation. open eco-innovation in business performance when it is used as a mediating variable between both constructs.