Climate impact, institutional context, and national climate change adaptation IP protection rates
Hyungseok Yoon, Peter Tashman, Mirko H. Benischke, Jonathan Doh, Namil Kim
Journal of Business Venturing · 2024 · Volume 39 · Issue 1
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2023.106359
Abstract
Why do entrepreneurs in some countries engage in more climate change adaptation (CCA) intellectual property (IP) protection than others? We postulate that entrepreneurs' attention is simultaneously situated in their country's climatic and institutional environments, and that these contexts shape the salience of CCA IP protection. Formally, we predict that entrepreneurs who would normally deprioritize CCA IP protection as an opportunity in the face of more urgent socioeconomic issues become more attuned to it as their country's climate impact increases. We then theorize institutional conditions that influence entrepreneurs' responsiveness to climate impact. First, we predict that stronger intellectual property rights institutions reduce entrepreneurs' uncertainty in capturing rents from their CCA IP and hence strengthen the relationship between climate impact and CCA IP protection. Second, we predict that informal institutions aligned with environmental movements increase the salience of climate impacts to corporate entrepreneurs by spurring their interests in environmental issues and hence also strengthen the climate impact-CCA IP protection relationship. Our empirical analyses using 689 country-year observations consisting of 95 countries over the period 2005 to 2015 reveal that country-level climate impact drives CCA IP protection, especially when there are strong intellectual property rights (IPR) regimes and environmental movements.
Keywords
Innovation, Climate change adaptation, Climate impact
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