Empirical research on the diffusion of environmental product and service innovations has significant limits: almost all investigations focus on just a single sector or technology, usually energy, and concern a small number of diffusion cases. Therefore, it is hardly possible to generalize across sectors and to identify potential differences between sectors. We address this research gap with an investigation of a large sample of 130 diffusion cases from 11 different sectors. We apply a new mixed-method approach of statistical analysis and qualitative extreme case analysis. We provide insights on the differences in dissemination rates and knowledge on sector-specific factors. This helps to explain diffusion processes and design effective sector-specific transition policies. The concept of explanation range of factors clarifies the role and relevance of different diffusion factors and opens up avenues for further research on environmental innovation. Based on our findings, it can be concluded that some factors explain diffusion in (almost) all cases (high explanatory range), some only in specific sectors (medium explanatory range), and some merely in individual cases (low explanatory range).

关于环境产品和服务创新的传播的实证研究有很大的局限性：几乎所有的调查都集中在一个部门或技术上，通常是能源，并且只涉及少量的传播案例。因此，几乎不可能跨部门进行概括并确定部门之间的潜在差异。我们通过调查来自11个不同部门的130个传播案例的大量样本来解决这一研究空白。我们采用了一种新的混合方法，即统计分析和定性极端案例分析。我们提供有关传播率差异的见解以及有关特定行业因素的知识。这有助于解释扩散过程并设计有效的针对特定部门的过渡政策。因子解释范围的概念阐明了不同扩散因子的作用和相关性，并为进一步研究环境创新开辟了道路。根据我们的发现，可以得出结论，一些因素解释了（几乎）所有情况下的扩散（较高的解释范围），有些仅解释了特定部门（中等解释范围），而有些仅解释了个别情况（低解释范围）。