LAUSR

Abstract Which factors influence enterprises’ participation in industrial symbiosis (IS)? It has not been studied well so far, which can be detrimental to IS development. The aims of this study are to propose an analytical approach to determine the factors that significantly influence companies’ participation in IS and to verify the feasibility of this approach, as well as investigating whether there are significant differences in the influencing factors for diverse types of companies. The main part of our approach involves collecting the scores of potential influencing factors from enterprises through a questionnaire and analyzing these scores with four models based on logistic regression. Enterprises are divided into companies participating in IS (PCs), companies that have not participated in IS (NPCs), producers of waste or by products (PWBs) and utilizer of waste or by products (UWBs), to reflect the differences in their influencing factors. This analytical approach was applied in Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) of China. The results show that this approach can conveniently determine the promoting and inhibiting factors of IS participation for different types of companies. In TEDA, for PCs, the requirement of environmental regulations is the first driving force, and the uncertainty of waste and by-products (WBs) is an important concern; meanwhile, for NPCs, geographical disadvantages are key restraints. Among the PCs, PWBs are more likely to be hindered by lack of IS awareness in the management, while UWBs are faced with more barriers, such as lack of support from the government and difficulties in reaching agreements. This study can provide insights into the factors that affect IS at the enterprise level as well as first-hand information for exploiting targeted policies to boost IS according to the influencing factors of each type of company.