Abstract

For many years, natural resources have been used as the main input of production process in countries around the world, which has caused many problems to our planet such as rapid climate change, loss of biodiversity, drastic environmental events, and social problems. In recent years, pressure on countries to transition to cleaner production processes to mitigate problems arising from using natural resources has increased. As a result, green products have become a point of interest due to their low environmental impact, and green product development has become an important part of green growth policies for many countries. Green product development requires technology, capital, infrastructure, and skills which are not evenly distributed among countries, therefore, the capability to develop green products are not the same between countries. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the evolution of green product development in 61 countries between 2003 and 2015 and explore the effect of this development on their overall green growth performance. To this end, this dissertation is designed based on the concept of product space and its main hypothesis of path-dependent economic growth. It employs an algorithm based on network science theory to identify patterns of green product development, and uses Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) as a statistical method to test the effect of green product development on Countries' Overall Green Growth Performance (COGGP) and suggest activities that can be targeted to foster countries' green product development and overall green growth performance. The results of this dissertation show countries followed the path-dependent economic growth to develop new green products, and at the same time for considerable amount of new green products, countries followed a process, non-path dependent green economic growth, to develop new green products and expand their green production baskets. In addition, the results show empirically that investment in innovating environmental related technologies enhance countries' overall green growth performance and green product development based on path-dependent economic growth hypothesis, but it is not enough to entirely eliminate the need for technology, capital, infrastructure, and skills for green product development.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2021

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Garibay, Ivan

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Degree Program

Industrial Engineering

Identifier

CFE0009320; DP0026924

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0026924

Language

English

Release Date

June 2022

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

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