Innovating for a greener world: Simulating low-carbon innovation in manufacturing companies from the lens of community succession

Under the global low-carbon scheme of things, manufacturing enterprises are believed to be the main bodies of carbon emissions. As a result, their low-carbon innovation behaviour has become an important driving force for the transformation of enterprises. Against this framework, the processes, laws and characteristics of their evolution trajectory need to be systematically studied. From the standpoint of community ecological succession, this study explores the evolution process of manufacturing enterprises' low-carbon innovation behaviour by improving the Kene model. The study also built a SKIN model for the evolution simulation of manufacturing enterprises' low-carbon innovation behaviour by using the NetLogo 6.2 software to carry out related simulations. The findings of the study show that: (1) the evolution of manufacturing enterprises' low-carbon innovation behaviour in the perspective of community succession has obvious stage characteristics; (2) social low-carbon normative pressure and stakeholder pressure have a positive effect on the evolution of manufacturing enterprises' low-carbon innovation behaviour; (3) low-carbon system factors promote the evolution of low-carbon innovation behaviour of innovation subjects; (4) the evolution of low-carbon innovation behaviour in the innovation community has path-dependent. Theoretically, based on the community succession concept, this study deepens research on evolution of manufacturing enterprises' low-carbon innovation behaviour. Moreover, the study has laid the foundation for the application of evolutionary theory, upper echelons theory and system theory in the field of manufacturing enterprises' low-carbon research.