1. Introduction
The economic activities of human society have caused serious damage to the environment, and environmental problems keep emerging, such as global warming, Antarctic ozone hole, serious land degradation, biodiversity reduction, and so on. It was reported that about 37 million people die each year as a result of environmental degradation [
1]. The extensive development mode has not only polluted and damaged the ecological environment, but also restricted the sustainable development of the manufacturing industry [
2]. The important problem facing the manufacturing industry at present is how to reduce the consumption of resources and environmental pollution to the greatest extent in the development of the manufacturing industry [
2]. The concept of green manufacturing is considered as the inevitable choice for the manufacturing industry to solve the current development dilemma. Green manufacturing is a modern manufacturing model that systematically considers environmental impact and resource efficiency, and its goal is to realize resource optimization and environmental protection [
3]. In order to better cope with the change of market environment, the manufacturing industry should rely on the green manufacturing ability to obtain long-term competitive advantage. To fully promote green manufacturing, enterprise must build a green manufacturing system, including the development of green products, green factories, green parks, green supply chains, and green supervision [
4]. There must be systematic green technology innovation in green manufacturing, and one of the key problems to be solved first is how to achieve green innovation.
Green innovation is a booster to promote economic growth and environmental protection. It has played an important role in adjusting the industrial structure and solving prominent environmental problems [
5]. Green innovation is the innovation of hardware or software related to green products or green processes, including technological innovation related to energy conservation, pollution prevention, pollution recovery, green product design, and environmental management. Enterprises can create or significantly improve their products quality, marketing methods, organizational structures and institutional arrangements, so as to improve their environment better than their counterparts. Green new product development (NPD) is one of the key links of green innovation [
6]. Green NPD is a complex technical and market process, which should strengthen the top-level design and system layout. With the enhancement of citizens’ awareness of environmental protection, green products are more and more valued by consumers. On the one hand, under the tide of energy saving and environmental protection, consumers have higher and higher requirements on the performance of energy saving and environmental protection of products. On the other hand, the research and development (R&D) of personalized and diversified green new products has become a challenge for supply chain enterprises [
7]. Green NPD can not only bring internal benefits such as technology, cost, and reputation to enterprises, but also improve the ecological environment and create a good living space for the society, thus generating external environmental and social benefits. External cooperation helps manufacturing enterprises reduce the cost and risk of innovation by integrating internal and external technical resources and achieve technological breakthroughs and strategic goals [
8]. By cooperating with green suppliers and customers, enterprises can improve the green NPD speed and green NPD quality and the personalized and diversified features of green NPD [
9]. With the deep integration of supply chain with Internet and Internet of things, it is an important way for enterprises to comply with the green wave and win market competition to develop green new products through external green supply chain integration (GSCI) [
10].
At present, the urgent problem that enterprises need to solve is how to effectively enhance NPD speed and quality through external GSCI. Many scholars acquiesce to the positive role of GSCI in green NPD [
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19]. Many existing studies mainly discussed the influencing factors of green NPD from the following two perspectives. Firstly, many studies on the external environment mainly analyzed the influencing factors of green NPD based on stakeholder theory and institutional theory. Driessen and Hillebrand believed that employees, shareholders, economic institutions and other stakeholders play a major role in the process of green NPD [
11]. De Medeiros et al. highlighted that enterprises will actively carry out green NPD activities if they have strong stakeholder integration ability [
12]. Weng et al. found that environmental regulations and different stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and competitors have differentiated impacts on enterprises’ green innovation activities [
13]. Hence, the pressure from environmental regulation and stakeholders is the main source of external pressure. Secondly, many studies on internal conditions mainly explored the driving mechanism of green innovation activities based on natural resource-based theory. Liao and Cheng proved that enterprise background characteristics such as size, age and industry can affect enterprise environmental innovation [
14]. Albort-morant et al. studied from the perspective of internal enterprise and found that internal absorption capacity plays an important driving role in sustainable innovation [
15]. Focusing on internal knowledge resources and capabilities, Lin and Chen found that green knowledge sharing can improve green dynamic capabilities, thus promoting enterprises to implement green innovation and gain green competitive advantages [
16]. Song et al. believed that internal sources such as environmental leadership, culture, and environmental competence can promote green NPD [
17]. Shu et al. highlighted that green management is more likely to lead to fundamental product innovation than incremental product innovation [
18]. Tang et al. found that the positive impact of green product development on enterprise performance is compound without considering environmental management concerns [
19]. Hence, enterprise background characteristics, resources, capabilities, managers’ attention and so on are the main internal driving forces. Although the above studies have achieved a series of valuable results, many studies on the driving factors of green NPD still have the following shortcomings. First, previous studies focused on examining the direct impact of independent explanatory variables on green NPD and did not consider the comprehensive mechanism of internal and external levels. The formulation of green NPD decisions is influenced by external environmental factors, especially the macro environment and green supply chain environment in which the enterprise is located. This formulation is also constrained by internal resources and green capabilities. The overall analysis of internal and external environmental factors is conducive to the comprehensive understanding of green NPD mechanisms. Second, previous studies only considered managerial attention as an internal factor of organization and ignored the influence of executive awareness on green NPD through its internal driving force. Third, previous studies have mostly used Western developed countries as a sample and lacked research on the driving factors for green NPD for Chinese companies. GSCM is an effective way to solve the conflict between manufacturing and environment from the perspective of system and integration [
11]. Accessing knowledge from outside and sharing internal knowledge are processes of knowledge creation that drive product innovation. Green NPD is not only to open up new market share, but also a huge driving force to break the green barriers of market trade [
16]. In order to enter a certain market, enterprises must bypass green barriers and develop green new products. Top managers are important personnel, responsible for operation and management and mastering important information, and are the key players in the enterprise’s innovation decision-making [
18]. From this point of view, some questions need to be further explored. How to improve the performance of green NPD through GSCI? What is the specific path and mechanism of the effects of external GSCI and knowledge spiral (KS) on the speed and quality of green NPD? Whether top management’s environmental awareness (TMEA) has a moderation role? How to improve the quality and speed of green NPD?
To compensate for the shortcomings, this study established a unified research framework of external GSCI, KS, green NPD, and TMEA. Structural equation modeling and analytic hierarchy process are used to explore the impact of external GSCI on green NPD and reveal the specific path and mechanism for improving the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. This paper not only explores the mechanism of green supplier integration (SI) and green customer integration (CI) on KS and the mechanism of their impact on the green NPD speed and green NPD quality, but also reveals the mediation role of KS in the relationship between external GSCI and green NPD. Moreover, this paper studies the moderation role of TMEA on the relationship between KS and green NPD.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. The literature review is presented in
Section 2. In
Section 3, Method, which includes variable measurements, data collection, and deviation tests, is introduced. Structural equation modeling and analytic hierarchy process are used to analyze the data in
Section 4. In
Section 5, the analysis of main effect, mediation effect and moderation effect are presented. Finally, conclusions and future research are presented in
Section 6.
5. Results and Discussion
According to the test results of main effect, mediation effect and moderation effect in
Section 4, the above results can be shown in
Table 9.
As shown in
Table 9, the hypotheses from H1a to H3f are supported. The mediating effect of KS is significant. The hypothesis H4a is not supported by test results. The moderating effect supports the hypothesis H4b that TMEA has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between KS and GQ.
5.1. Analysis of Main Effect
As shown in
Figure 3 and
Table 6, the standardized path coefficients of green SI and green CI on GS are 0.48 and 0.32, respectively, and are all significant at 1% level. The standardized path coefficients of green SI and green CI on GQ are 0.43 and 0.29, respectively, and are all significant at 1% level. The standardized path coefficients of green SI and green CI on KS are 0.28 and 0.22, respectively, and are significant at the level of 1% and 5%, respectively. The standardized path coefficient of KS on GS is 0.19 and is significant at 10%. The standardized path coefficient of KS on GQ is 0.24 and is significant at 1%. The above analysis shows that green SI and green CI have significant positive effects on GS, GQ, and KS, and KS has a significant positive effect on GS and GS, respectively. The hypotheses from H1a to H3b have been verified. In addition, compared with green CI, green SI has a greater impact on KS, GS and GQ. Furthermore, compared with GS, KS has a greater impact on GQ.
Based on the above analysis, enterprises should strengthen the construction of green NPD information system by integrating with external green supply chain and establishing long-term strategic partnership. The system can not only effectively realize information sharing and maximize the reduction cost of green new product and transaction, but also optimize the allocation of green NPD resources. In addition, the system can improve the competitive advantage of external GSCI and has a positive impact on the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. It should be emphasized that the KS effect generated by the integration of enterprises and external green supply chain cannot be ignored in this process. The purpose of KS is for enterprises to rely on the existing knowledge to integrate the knowledge of green suppliers and customers, and then create the target knowledge needed for green NPD. This is conducive to reducing the knowledge gap and improving the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. Therefore, enterprises should implement GSCI measures from the strategic level with green NPD as the object. Moreover, enterprises should efficiently integrate knowledge resources in green supply chain to realize the optimal allocation, advantage reciprocity and resource sharing of green NPD resources. In addition, enterprises should grasp the green trend of green suppliers and customers, and timely adjust green NPD strategy. In terms of knowledge interaction, enterprises should strengthen the management of knowledge related to green NPD based on external GSCI and create a knowledge sharing atmosphere for green NPD. On the one hand, enterprises should actively cultivate rational trust, emotional tacit understanding and common vision with green suppliers and customers and enhance the sense of security and willingness of knowledge sharing. On the other hand, enterprises should set up appropriate incentive mechanism of reward and punishment and intellectual property protection measures to reduce the cost of knowledge sharing and the economic loss caused by knowledge spillover effect. These measures are conducive to mobilizing the enthusiasm of green suppliers and customers to share knowledge. The results show that KS can shorten the time to market of green new products and promote the dissemination of innovative results and improve the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. Enterprises should clarify the interaction and transformation process of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge and the role of KS in promoting the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. The government should pay attention to the environmental demands of green consumers and supply chain partners.
5.2. Analysis of Mediation Effect
KS has a significant mediating effect in the relationship between green SI and green CI and the green NPD speed and green NPD quality, respectively. As shown in
Table 7, the total effect of green SI on GS is 0.520; the direct effect is 0.478 and the indirect effect is 0.042. That is to say, 0.042 of the total effect of green SI on GS is achieved through KS mediating effect, and the mediating effect accounts for 0.081 of the total effect. The total effect of green SI on GQ is 0.494; the direct effect is 0.435 and the indirect effect is 0.059. It indicates that the mediating effect of KS between green SI and GQ is 0.059, and the mediating effect accounts for 0.119 of the total effect. In the above two mediation paths, the deviation correction bootstrap confidence interval with 95% confidence does not contain 0. The results show that KS play a significant part in the mediating role of green SI and the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. Compared with GS, KS has stronger mediating effect on green SI and GQ. The same analysis method was used to analyze the mediating effect of KS between CI and GS and GQ. Among the 0.364 total effect of CI on GS, 0.048 is achieved through the intermediary effect of KS, and the proportion of the intermediary effect in the total effect is 0.132. The mediating effect of KS between CI and GQ is 0.060, and the mediating effect accounts for 0.170 of the total effect. The deviation correction bootstrap confidence intervals for the above two mediation paths with 95% confidence do not contain 0. The results indicate that KS has a significant partial mediating effect in the relationship between green CI and GS and GQ. Compared with GS, KS has stronger mediating effect between green CI and GQ. The analysis results of the above four mediation paths show that KS has a stronger effect on improving GQ than GS. Compared with green SI, the equivalent KS capability is more significant in integrating green customers information.
The purpose of KS is to create the target knowledge needed for green NPD from the existing knowledge through socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. This is conducive to reducing knowledge gap or cross-domain knowledge gap and improving the green NPD speed and green NPD quality. Socialization can provide help for the generation of green NPD ideas, and externalization can inspire green suppliers and customers to come up with ideas. Combination can help to integrate ideas from green suppliers and customers, and internalization can encourage enterprises to find problems and propose new ideas for green NPD. Therefore, enterprises should enhance the management awareness of knowledge related to green NPD and clarify the interaction and transformation process of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Moreover, enterprises should establish a knowledge-based and learning-oriented cultural organization in green NPD team to promote knowledge sharing and integration. Furthermore, enterprises should try their best to make explicit the tacit knowledge from green suppliers and customers to promote the rise of KS. In terms of the personal ability of employees, enterprises should build a professional academic team to enhance the sensitivity, identification, and acceptance of new things and knowledge. In addition, enterprises should be good at seizing opportunities to bring valuable knowledge and technology related to green NPD back to enterprises for timely digestion, absorption, and R&D.
5.3. Analysis of Moderation Effect
The result of moderating effect supports the hypothesis H4b that TMEA has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between KS and GQ (β = 0.731, p < 0.05). This result shows that the stronger the TMEA is, the more enterprises attach importance to the social responsibility related to green NPD. Enterprises regard the emphasis on the green NPD quality from green consumers and suppliers as market opportunities and put green development factors into the interaction between explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge. This has a positive impact on improving the green NPD quality. The hypothesis H4a is not supported by test results, and TMEA has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between KS and GS. The result shows that the connection between KS and GS is close and significant, and whether the TMEA is strong or weak, the enterprise will pay attention to the product market situation. In this situation, enterprises tend to focus on the impact of KS on financial performance based on their own interests. At the same time, influenced by the mentality of “seeking quick success and quick profit”, the enterprise tends to utilize KS ability to occupy a wide range of market resources. We have noticed that the adjustment coefficient of TMEA on the relationship between KS and GS is a negative number. One possible explanation is that green NPD is divided into two stages: green product design and clean production. At present, most of China’s enterprises are in the primary stage of green NPD, and the higher the TMEA, the more likely the enterprise is to adopt cleaner production measures. From the design of green products to the transformation of green technology, the realization of clean production has the hysteresis of strategic timeliness. Therefore, it is likely that the adjustment coefficient between KS and GS is a negative number.
At the present stage of industrial transformation and consumption upgrading, China’s manufacturing industry has begun to shift from “quantity” to “quality”. The improvement of the green NPD quality reflects the competitiveness of sustainable growth of enterprises and becomes an effective means for enterprises to win long-term innovation benefits. The moderating effect of TMEA has the following implications. First, top managers should pay attention to the green NPD quality instead of rushing success. Second, enterprises should put the concept of green environmental protection into a strategic height, and truly integrate it into green NPD, thereby improving the green NPD quality. Third, the government should actively guide the establishment of social environmental awareness system, and create a good green concept and green atmosphere, thereby opening up new markets for green products. Fourth, policymakers should establish a relationship with top managers, and regularly deliver environmental protection information to top managers by organizing training courses for entrepreneurs and trade associations.
6. Conclusions
With the enhancement of environmental protection, green products have been attracted wide attention. As consumers consume more green products, supply chain enterprises are faced with diversified requirements of green consumers. Green NPD can meet the requirements of both green consumers and supply chain enterprises. With the integration of supply chain and Internet of things, the development of green new products through external GSCI is one of the important ways for enterprises to win the green market. To explore the mechanisms in this process, we used structural equation modeling and analytic hierarchy process to study the action mechanism of green SI and green CI on KS and its influence mechanism on the green NPD speed and green NPD quality, and reveal the mediating role of KS in the relationship between external GSCI and green NPD. In addition, the moderation effect of TMEA on the relationship between KS and green NPD was studied. The results of this study are as follows. (i) Green SI and green CI have significant positive effects on GS, GQ, and KS, and KS has a significant positive effect on GS and GS. Compared with green CI, green SI has greater impact on KS, GS and GQ. In addition, compared with GS, KS has a greater impact on GQ; (ii) KS has a significant partial mediating effect in the relationship between green CI, GS, and GQ. Compared with GS, KS has stronger mediating effect between green CI and GQ. Compared with green SI, the equivalent knowledge spiral capability is more significant in integrating green customer information; (iii) TMEA has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between KS and GQ and has no significant moderating effect on the relationship between KS and GS.
This study not only further enrich the knowledge of institutional theory, knowledge management and green NPD, but also have important management implications for top managers and policymakers. For enterprises, first, enterprises should implement GSCI from the strategic level and take green NPD as the object to realize the optimal allocation of green NPD resources, advantage reciprocity and resource sharing. Second, enterprises should strengthen the knowledge management of green NPD, and create a knowledge sharing atmosphere of green NPD. At the same time, enterprises should enhance the interactive transformation process of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Third, top managers should put the concept of green environmental protection at a strategic height and integrate it into green NPD to improve the quality of green NPD. For policymakers, first, policymakers should actively guide the establishment of social environmental protection awareness system and open up new markets for green products. Second, policymakers should establish a relationship with top managers, and regularly convey environmental protection information to top managers by organizing training courses for entrepreneurs and industry associations. Third, policymakers should pay attention to the environmental demands of green consumer groups and green supply chain partners.
In this study, there are still some deficiencies which also provide useful ideas for future study. First, due to the difficulty in data collection, the data used in this study is still not a large sample study in a strict sense. The data used in this study is only the cross-sectional data, and future study can attempt to use longitudinal data to further study. Second, KS as a variable to be considered ensures the integrity of green NPD, but it weakens the detailed analysis of each of its key steps. Future research can consider the mediating effect of the four dimensions of KS in the relationship between external GSCM and the green NPD speed and green NPD quality, so as to improve the comprehensiveness of research results.