What Influences Adoption of Green Award Criteria in a Public Contract? An Empirical Analysis of 2018 European Public Procurement Contract Award Notices

Green public procurement (GPP) is a policy tool aiming to achieve environmental protection and resource reservation via public procurement. After decades of adaptation, what promotes and hinders its uptake in public contracting remains difficult to discern. This research explores factors that influence the adoption of green award criteria, covering features of procurement procedures, purchasers, tenderers, and the business sectors through empirical analysis of Probit regression combined with a fixed term method. The data is contract award notices (CAN) from 33 countries in Europe in 2018. Our findings suggest that framework agreements, the medical products sector, the health and social services sector, and the business services sector are negatively correlated with whether a contract is green. On the other hand, the contract value, Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)coverage, joint procurement, competitive dialogue, negotiation with competition (with a call for competition), restricted procedure, transport equipment sector, and food sector can positively correlate with green contracts, or these factors increase the possibility of a contract being green. Explicit explanations on these relations are provided. This research identifies factors relating with and influencing the application of green award criteria in public contracts, which would inform public sectors on efficient resources allocation in terms of increasing green public procurement performance.