The Impact of Digitization of Public Services On Eco-Innovation: A Case Study of V4 Countries

The digitization of public services should serve as a catalyst for systemic change by fundamentally transforming the functioning of society and insti-tutions through the optimization of processes and more efficient manage-ment of resources, thus creating favorable conditions for the wider imple-mentation of eco-innovations. Based on the institutional theory, the aim of the contribution is therefore to verify the influence of the digitization of public services on the country's eco-innovation potential measured by the eco-innovation index (EII). We chose the period 2014-2023 for the analy-sis. We used GLS restricted maximum likelihood to model the relationship. The results indicate that the extent of information about publicly provided services, together with the extent to which governments are transparent about: the process of providing services in the public interest, their own ac-countability and performance, and personal data involved in providing ser-vices (UC_TR_combined) has a statistically significant positive effect on EII (β = 0.47466, p = 0.0076). On the contrary, key enables (KE) did not show, like intercept (p > 0.05), a statistically significant effect on EII (β = -0.25768, p = 0.2663). The results extend institutional theory by highlight-ing the importance of transparency and accountability of public services in the context of eco-innovation. At the same time, the study provides practi-cal recommendations for policy makers on how to more effectively integrate digitization into public sector environmental strategies. At the same time, the study provides practical recommendations for policy makers on how to more effectively integrate digitization into public sector environmental strategies. The study is limited by the focus on V4 countries, the selection of eGovernment indicators and the short time period, which may limit the generalizability of the results to countries with higher digitization and eco-innovation performance. Future research should therefore examine a wider range of variables, regional and sectoral relationships, as well as the long-term impacts of digitization on eco-innovation.