The role of innovation and institutional pressures in sustainable packaging

Abstract

There is an under-developed scale of research conducted on sustainable production and consumption of environmentally friendly packaging Tanzania. Using the main concepts from institutional theory along with the diffusion of innovation model, this paper will examine the environmentally friendly packaging innovations in the Tanzanian food and beverage industry. The purpose of this research is to understand the factors that enable adoption. It suggests that mimetic, coercive and normative pressures exist within manufacturing firms that can regulate and coordinate solutions. A level of understanding of perceived fidelity and perceived effort required were established to develop conditions where firms can create strategies for the adoption environmentally sustainable packaging. The research setting is in the manufacturing industry. The data gathered for this study was collected by distributing a survey to respondents using convenience and snow-balling technique. Manufacturing businesses and packaging suppliers of the food and beverage industry participated. The respondents were requested to forward the survey by passing on the google form link to business owners, company CEOs, CFOs, COOs. 29 firm responses from the target population were measured to establish the pressures that they face and their intention to adopt. After applying regression analysis to the data, coercive pressure and intention to adopt with perceived fidelity as a moderator suggested a significant relationship. Similarly, perceived effort required positively moderated the relationship between mimetic pressure and intention to adopt. However, the results showed that no significant relationship from each of the three isomorphic constructs namely normative, mimetic and coercive and intention to adopt. This was contradictory to previous researchers of isomorphic pressures and should be subjected to future research.