Manifestations of the European Ecological Footprint from the Perspective of Social Responsibility Codes

The process of converting the economy to more sustainable production forms is the essence of bio-economy, currently becoming more and more important in all the European countries. Sustainability is a complex concept that can be quantified through an entire system of indicators. A “marker” of corporate environmental responsibility, of the extent and manner in which the companies apply social responsibility codes is the ecological footprint. The present study identifies, using a cumulative ordinal logistic regression model with proportional odds, the factors with significant impact on the behavioral changes of the ecological footprint of the production, for finding ways of increasing the sustainability in the business environment, through a better application of social responsibility codes. At the same time, the variables included in the model were selected in accordance with the principles of the European Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy, serving as criteria for the hierarchy and clustering of European countries, for identifying patterns and predicting the behavior of ecological footprint of production, as a prerequisite for optimizing social environmental responsibility and applying social responsibility codes in the business environment. The analysis results indicate that the educational level of labor force, the degree of economic freedom and the use of renewable energy sources have a significant positive influence on the ecological footprint behavior, while the social exclusion has a significant negative effect, with a major impact on the prospects of sustainable growth, specific to bio-economy.