Enterprise Support for the European Green Deal: Institutional Perceptions, Competitiveness and Environmental Engagement

This study examines factors associated with enterprise support for the European Green Deal (EGD) and differences in environmental engagement. The analysis uses survey data from 710 enterprises in selected regions of Poland and Germany, predominantly small- and medium-sized enterprises, collected between December 2024 and June 2025. First, a latent class analysis for mixed-type indicators identified two exploratory profiles: adaptive participants in the transition and passive and sceptical enterprises. These groups differed mainly in EGD support, assessment of government measures, perceived competitiveness effects, regulatory awareness and environmental activity, and also in characteristics not used to estimate the classes. Second, binary logistic regression and average marginal effects were used to analyse factors associated with EGD support, complemented by partial proportional-odds, penalised and multiple-imputation models, cross-validation and harmonised country-specific models. A gradient boosting machine evaluated with nested cross-validation, supported by SHAP analysis, provided a complementary assessment of predictor importance. Perceptions of government measures were among the strongest predictors and showed the largest associations in the logistic model. More favourable views of competitiveness effects, a positive assessment of the energy transition and advanced engagement in resources and waste management were also positively associated with support, whereas partial self-reported familiarity with the Fit for 55 framework was associated with lower support. The main associations showed broadly similar patterns in the Polish and German subsamples. The findings indicate that enterprise responses to the EGD are associated with institutional and competitiveness perceptions; mechanisms such as regulatory uncertainty are not measured directly, and given the cross-sectional design, they should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects.