Green Public Procurement (GPP) is an increasingly debated “demand side” environmental policy instrument. The aim of this paper is to take stock of the related literature, with the twofold aim of ...developing a conceptual model of the relevant phases of GPP and to identify the related research gaps in detail. The literature analyzed here comprises English language papers, which are focused on GPP during the time period from 2000 to 2016. By means of a systematic literature review and content analysis, we provide both a quantitative and qualitative viewpoint. As our analysis reveals, GPP discussion has mostly focused so far on the specific impacts of GPP implementation, while the discussion on GPP as compared to other environmental policy tools, in terms of efficiency and innovation, is still lagging behind; this is coupled with a limited geographical coverage. Finally, by disaggregating the 17 years period under scrutiny into four sub-periods allows us to outline the changes in research trends over time.
•We develop an innovative critical review on Green Public Procurement.•We focus on the period 2000–2016, and adopt a content analysis method.•The literature is increasingly focused on environmental performances.•The field of GPP is under-theorized in terms of its efficiency properties.•More attention on the link between GPP and eco-innovation is needed.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
•Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations.•Winning public procurement awards with ...environmental selection criteria increases a firm's probability of introducing more environmentally friendly products on average by 20 percentage points.•This effect is driven by small and medium-sized firms and is not significant for larger firms.
Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations. However, the empirical evidence on its innovation impact is limited. We construct a novel firm-level dataset to investigate the effect of winning public procurement tenders with additional environmental award criteria on firms’ introduction of environmental innovations. Employing cross-sectional difference-in-differences methods, we find that winning public procurement awards with environmental selection criteria increases a firm's probability of introducing more environmentally friendly products on average by 20 percentage points. We show that this effect is driven by small and medium-sized firms and is not statistically significant for larger firms. Furthremore, there is no statistically significant effect on the introduction of more environmentally friendly processes.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of preliminary publications on green and sustainable public procurement from the year 2000 until now. The aim of the review is to organise, ...evaluate and identify patterns and clusters in published articles, providing an overview of the state of the art in green and sustainable public procurement. Classification of the data identified three overall themes: organisational aspects, individual behaviour and operational tools, which comprise nine sub-categories: three organisational, two behavioural and four operational. The review shows how awareness and knowledge of circular public procurement attributes, based on circular policy and strategy implementation, are essential to conduct circular public procurement. The procurer’s beliefs and values are of high relevance in a transformation towards circular public procurement, simply not going for the lowest price, but finding an optimum combination that includes risk, timeliness and cost for the public institution on a life-cycle basis. Eco-labels, standards, life cycle assessments and life cycle costing are core parts of the process. Outlining the present knowledge as a foundation for future research in circular public procurement process development, this paper holds implications for both academics and procurement practitioners.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This paper analyses the uptake of a voluntary green public procurement policy in Sweden. The policy, decided in 2006, stated a national goal for the public sector to increase its share of organic ...food purchases to 25% by 2010. The overall purpose was to increase organic farming. Municipalities, which are highly independent authorities with self-determination, were encouraged to formulate own political goals. Based on survey data on organic food purchases for the period 2003–2016, supplemented with data on municipality characteristics, we analyse the determinants of the local uptake of the national policy, accounting for potential selection bias. The main finding is that local political goals are set and that these have in turn, a significant and positive effect on the share of organic food purchases. This suggests that there is an uptake of the voluntary policy. Also, we find that the increase in expenditures per capita devoted to organic food is quite substantial following the adoption of a local policy.
•This paper studies the local uptake of a national voluntary organic food policy.•Political ambitions have a positive effect on the share of organic food purchased.•Adoption of the policy is associated with increased organic food expenditures.•Financial factors and green awareness matter for the local uptake of the policy.•Results are corrected for selection bias in the survey data.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
As “green public procurement” (GPP) is playing an increasingly important role in stimulating the demand for environmentally friendly products and services, there is a strongly emerging need to ...analyze which factors drive the inclusion of environmental criteria in public tenders. Working on data from Italian municipalities, our statistical analysis confirmed that intensifying information and raising awareness on GPP techniques can strongly support the development of public green tenders. Moreover, our work reveals that good GPP performance cannot be achieved through the mere adoption of a certified Environmental Management System (EMS) by a public authority alone, but rather through the level of maturity of the certified EMS that provides a growing “value added” to GPP practices. Finally, findings of this study demonstrate that the relevant limitations linked to the small size of public authorities can be overcome by the progress in GPP brought by several European, national and local supporting initiatives.
•We carried out a questionnaire survey in Italian municipalities.•We investigate factors that influence green public procurement actions at local level.•Information and awareness strongly support the development of public green tenders.•GPP is determined by strategy, commitment and efforts within public administrations.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
Public procurement is the acquisition of products and services needed for public organizations to fulfill their functional objectives. Public procurement can also be a tool to meet horizontal ...objectives such as environmental or social ones. In this paper, public procurement is highlighted as a tool for the transition to circular economy. However, circular public procurement cannot be confined to just a procurement department as it requires collaboration internally across departments and externally with partners in the supply chain. The current practices within public procurement are explored in the analyses of eight proactive Danish municipalities, with a focus on the development from green to circular public procurement. This research is based on practices and learning theory to understand what actually happens in an organization, in other words, how people work. The difference between practices and policies is noticeable in public procurement, as policies stipulate general guidelines, while the inclusion of green and circular aspects depend on the competences of each individual procurement department. Tools supporting this inclusion are at the center of successfully using public procurement to support environmental concerns, for example, through the application of ecolabels, while the lack of circular public procurement tools presents a barrier for further uptake. In several of the cases explored, green public procurement practices are driven by demand from end-users, while the rather fewer experiences with circular public procurement are project-based and driven by management. From the procurement departments’ point of view, circular procurement is still perceived as “new and difficult,” and the principles of circular procurement are vague. Also, circular public procurement requires competences that are not present in the procurement departments today, and therefore their understanding of circular procurement is restricted to a few well-known cases.
•A practice perspective on GPP and CPP in Danish municipalities.•CPP practice rely on end-user demands for inclusion of environmental circular criteria.•CPP practice is focused on products and lacks a circular system perspective.•Lack of CPP capabilities in municipalities favors GPP practices.•CPP requires collaboration internally across functions and externally across value chains.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
Every institution running the services needs to procure goods and services in running the activities. The procurement practices not only discuss the quality and value of products but also determine ...the environmental impact. This study identifies and evaluates factors that affected the application of Green public procurement (GPP) in hospitals and looked at the recommended solutions and response actions. Respondents selected as the object of this study were 34 people involved in the procurement process from several Indonesian government hospitals. In this study, the inhibiting factors of the application of GPP were divided into eight variables with 27 indicators. The analytical method used in this study is the PLS method. The study results indicated that two of the eight indicators significantly affected the implementation of GPP are cost and products.
Circular economy (CE) has become worldwide an effective pathway for sustainable development against the linear model. Sustainable consumption and production (SCP) tools have been identified either as ...booster of circularity and as supporter for the achievement of sustainable development goals. Environmental Management System (EMS), Green Public Procurement (GPP), Ecodesign Directive, Ecolabel, Energy Label and Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) have been considered either by academic and practitioners as tools useful to promote CE. Although the attention on SCP tools and CE has growth, no studies have investigated the linkages between these two topics. To bridge this gap, the aim of this study is to provide a literature review on the integration between CE and SCP tools. The revisited material consisted of 455 studies and was evaluated using a systematic approach. By critically analysing 35 papers, the study identified EMS and Ecodesign as the tools with the highest level of integration with CE, while the other tools seem to be characterized by a “stand-alone” approach. However, the in-depth analysis of the results highlighted that there is still room for improvement of scholars’ contribution on the integration between SCP tools and CE. We identified three main areas for future research agenda in order to spur further academic and technical debate. The first major area concerns the role of EMS in increasing organisations’ circularity; The second main area includes Ecodesign Directive and ETV in the design and manufacturing processes of the products; the third main area focuses on GPP, Ecolabel and Energy Label in driving greener consumption by setting products’ circular criteria.
•We study the relation between circular economy and SCP tools.•Our systematic literature review identified 455 studies, 35 was critically analysed.•EMS and Ecodesign have the highest level of integration with circular economy.•Other tools are characterized by a “stand-alone” approach with room for improvement.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Green public procurement (GPP) is one of the crucial environmental policy tools for sustainability. Although GPP has been implemented in many developing countries, its performance is in urgent need ...of improvement. This study focuses on the perspective of procurement officials’ knowledge and develops a new conceptual model with direct and moderating effects to explore factors that may affect Chinese procurement officials’ GPP performance. Using data collected from 139 Chinese local government officials and employing hierarchical regression analysis, this study finds that procurement officials’ awareness of GPP implementation policies exerts a positive, direct impact on their GPP performance. Procurement officials’ receiving GPP training and working in local governments included in a mature China national sustainable community (CNSC) program can positively moderate the relationships between their awareness of GPP implementation policies and GPP performance. However, awareness of GPP-related regulations does not have the same effect. Meanwhile, even the mature CNSC program cannot exert a positive, direct impact on GPP performance. This study deepens the research on influence factors of GPP performance, the policy implications can be useful for policymakers in China and other developing countries.
•We develop a conceptual model for factors affecting GPP performance.•The perspective of this study is officials’ knowledge.•The awareness of GPP policies exerts positively direct impact on GPP performance.•GPP training and CNSC program both have moderation effect.•CNSC program fails to exert direct impact on GPP performance.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Green public procurement (GPP) has been extensively adopted as a public administration tool for achieving sustainability outcomes. However, there is a marked lack of understanding regarding the ...determinants of GPP adoption beyond, that is, the characteristics of the contracting authority. Indeed, most studies have focused their attention on these micro determinants, with little being known about the macro and meso factors involved. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by analyzing macro and meso adoption factors. To do so, we explore GPP in the award criteria for twentyfive European countries as recorded in Tenders Electronic Daily database for the period 2006–2017. Our results show significant cross-country differences in GPP uptake and we identify factors beyond those of the contracting unit itself that condition GPP adoption. Specifically, more developed countries and a larger government size impact positively on GPP. GPP adoption has evolved favorably over time, and regional and local administrations show a clearer preference for GPP than is shown by national governments or EU authorities. We find that better governance is linked to GPP adoption and that larger contracts are more likely to include GPP. Our results confirm that join procurement between contracting authorities more probability to adopt GPP. Our results are useful for defining a more comprehensive decision-making framework for GPP.
•Macro and meso determinants of GPP have largely been omitted from previous studies.•We explore GPP in the award criteria in the European TED database.•Size of government and economic development are positively associated with GPP adoption.•Good governance and local and regional government also have a positive impact.•Positive effects on GPP adoption over time and across-country exist as do differences by sector.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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