IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ajk/ajkdps/380.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inventors' Personal Experience of Natural Disasters and Green Innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Lisa Keding

    (RWTH University)

  • Marten C. Ritterrath

    (University of Cologne)

Abstract

We show that personal experiences affect high-stakes economic decisions among inventors. Using matched patent and survey data from French and German inventors linked to natural disaster records, we exploit exogenous variation in disaster exposure. Inventors personally affected by natural disasters subsequently produce 8.2% more green patents, primarily driven by emission-reducing mitigation technologies, while non-green innovation remains unaffected. The absence of sizable spatial spillovers highlights the importance of personal experience. Disaster exposure shapes innovation choices by altering profitability expectations through shifting higher-order beliefs about consumer demand and anticipated regulation. Embedding this channel in a formal model, we disentangle the role of expectations and intrinsic motivation. The model predicts, and the data confirm, that effects are strongest in competitive markets, where profit incentives matter most.

Suggested Citation

  • Lisa Keding & Marten C. Ritterrath, 2025. "Inventors' Personal Experience of Natural Disasters and Green Innovation," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 380, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:380
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_380_2025.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q55 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Technological Innovation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:380. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ECONtribute Office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.econtribute.de .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.