Green Innovation and the Sustainability of Oil and Gas Firms in South-South, Nigeria

This study investigated the impact of green innovation, one of the major components of green entrepreneurial practice, on three indicators of firm sustainability, namely economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and social sustainability, of oil and gas companies in the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria. While most of the current research considers green practice as a composite construct or divides attention between multiple practice-dimensions simultaneously, this study examines one dimension of green practice, green innovation, and compares it to three different sustainability measures to determine the extent to which green innovation explains the variance in each of these pillars of firm sustainability. The study used a correlational survey design with a quantitative positivist research paradigm, based on the Triple Bottom Line theory and supported by the Resource-Based View. A structured questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale was used to collect data from management-level staff purposively selected from oil and gas companies listed in the register of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) with 102 valid responses analysed. Three null hypotheses were formulated and tested with Pearson product-moment correlation at the 0.05 level of significance using SPSS version 25. The results indicated that green innovation was positively and statistically significantly related to economic sustainability (r = .751, p < .001), environmental sustainability (r = .565, p < .001) and social sustainability (r = .642, p < .001). The three null hypotheses were therefore rejected. The results show that eco-friendly product, process and technology innovations are a powerful and generalisable sustainability performance driver in all three dimensions of the triple bottom line, even in a resource-extractive and ecologically sensitive operating context. The study places its results in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 7, 8, 9, 12 and 13) and suggests that oil and gas companies should institutionalise green innovation by allocating dedicated research and development budgets, investing in cleaner technologies, and incentivizing innovation through performance-based measures; and that regulators should enhance policy tools that encourage proactive eco-innovation.