Firm Revenue, Investment Intensity, and Green Human Capital in the Resource-Efficiency Practices of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Latent Class Analysis

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for a large share of business-related environmental pressure, yet the firm-level resources that distinguish more engaged from less engaged SMEs remain contested. Using Flash Eurobarometer 549 (2024), we analyze 6304 SMEs with 10–249 employees in 37 European countries. Latent class analysis of nine resource-efficiency practices identifies four profiles: Minimal, Broad-partial, a tentative Water/energy specialist profile, and Advanced. Multinomial logit models with country fixed effects relate profile membership to total revenue, investment intensity in resource efficiency, and the share of employees in green jobs. Investment intensity and green-jobs share are consistently associated with Advanced membership, and the investment association is concentrated at the step from no to modest investment. Both associations become stronger after correction for classification error and hold under survey weighting, multiple imputation and 39 alternative specifications. Revenue is associated with Advanced membership when countries are pooled but, within countries, the association is small and not robust. Because country fixed effects absorb many national differences, this pattern points to between-country heterogeneity rather than to an identified institutional mechanism. Given the cross-sectional design and the conceptual overlap between investment, green jobs and practices, the results describe co-occurring facets of engagement, not causal effects.