The role of national culture in renewable energy development and green innovation dynamics: a cross-country analysis

The global shift toward sustainability is increasingly dependent on renewable energy development and green energy innovation, but the role of national culture in shaping their interaction remains underexplored. We argue that national cultural context significantly influences the dynamic relationships among renewable energy development and renewable energy patents while also accounting for the roles of financial development and foreign direct investment. Using a dataset of 29 countries from 2000 to 2023, we construct a composite national culture index from Hofstede’s six cultural dimensions and classify countries into high- and medium- to low-index groups. We employ a panel vector autoregression framework with a generalized method of moments estimation. The results show that in high-culture-index countries, renewable energy development predominantly drives renewable energy patents in a demand-pull dynamic, with limited feedback effects. In contrast, medium- to low-index countries exhibit a bidirectional relationship between renewable energy development, renewable energy patents, and financial development, reflecting stronger technology-push and market-pull synergies. Across both groups, foreign direct investment shows no significant integration into the core renewable energy innovation–development dynamics. These findings highlight the regulatory role of cultural–institutional configurations in renewable transitions. The policy implications include tailoring strategies to cultural contexts: high-culture-index countries may require incentives to overcome renewable innovation path dependence, while medium- to low-index countries could benefit from strengthening technology-push mechanisms and institutional coordination.