This paper aims to develop a multilevel conceptual framework to explain how clusters and industrial districts transition toward environmental sustainability through localized diffusion mechanisms. It addresses the unresolved theoretical question of how traditional localized spillovers evolve into green spillovers, enabling the collective diffusion of sustainability-related knowledge, routines, norms and institutional signals among geographically proximate firms and supporting actors. In doing so, the study explains when, why and how sustainability transition contributes to renewed territorial competitiveness.
The paper adopts a theory-building conceptual approach that integrates insights from cluster and industrial district research, sustainability transition studies, competitiveness theory and strategic management. Through cross-stream synthesis, it introduces the construct of green spillovers, develops its core dimensions, and proposes a multilevel framework linking cluster-level antecedents, meso-level diffusion mechanisms, and firm- and territorial-level competitiveness outcomes.
The framework suggests that green spillovers emerge under conditions of institutional thickness, dense interfirm interaction, shared sustainability infrastructures, and external green transition pressures. These spillovers diffuse through mechanisms such as interfirm imitation, labor mobility, buyer–supplier learning, collective experimentation and orchestration by cluster intermediaries. The resulting outcomes include stronger eco-innovation, cleaner production, circular economy adoption, ESG legitimacy, export upgrading, ecosystem resilience and territorial path renewal.
The study advances theory by introducing green spillovers as a distinct meso-level mechanism connecting sustainability transition with cluster competitiveness. It extends localized spillover theory beyond conventional innovation logic and reconceptualizes environmental upgrading as a collective territorial capability that underpins long-term competitiveness and industrial renewal.
