Innovation, environmental commitment, internationalization and sustainability: A survival analysis of Spanish marine aquaculture firms

The objective of this paper is to analyse the factors that determine Spanish aquaculture firm survival to improve understanding of the sector dynamics. Specifically, this paper focuses on marine aquaculture enterprises and evaluates how internationalization, the environmental commitment of the firm, and the ability to innovate, as well as other factors such as a firm's financial and accounting information, may be associated with the decisions by Spanish aquaculture firms to remain in the industry. The empirical analysis, conducted over the 2007-2014 period, is based on the Cox proportional hazard model. Our main findings reveal that those firms that have an environmental commitment are less likely to exit the industry than those that have no such commitment. Furthermore, our results also highlight the positive effect of economic profitability and long-term solvency on the survival of the firms and the negative effect of the age of the firms. Finally, we find that the investment in R & D activities and the internationalization of the firms did not contribute significantly to the model, indicating that they are not crucial factors for the survival of the firms.