## 6 Discussion and Conclusions
Remarkably, China, one of the middle-income countries, also emerged as a leader. Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines follow the trend of eco-innovation policies. Pakistan, Vietnam, India, Mongolia, and Bangladesh are loungers that slowly catch up to eco-innovation approaches. Myanmar, Lao PDR, Brunei Darussalam, and Cambodia are laggards in eco-innovation. They lack both the technology push (supply side) and the market pull (demand side) instruments for eco-innovation. They have insufficient resources to achieve eco-innovation. In economically and technically less advanced countries, technology transfer is the principal source of innovation [8]. They have conducted eco-innovation projects by depending on external financial and technical support, such as the SWITCH-Asia program from the European Commission. The laggard group, which has low economic development needs, external inputs for introducing policy instruments for eco-innovation. The result of mapping indicates that higher income countries in stages 2, 2-3, and 3 established more policy instruments than countries in stages 1 and 1-2. The choice of instruments to support eco-innovation is related to a country's level of development [2]. Following the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis [83], we can assume, when a certain level of income per capita is reached, that economic growth leads to environmental improvements due to environmental regulations, better technology, and higher environmental expenditures [70]. In this study, higher-income countries actively initiated supply-side instruments to support eco-innovation and preferred R&D support. Less advanced countries tend to rely more on demand-side instruments. This trend is similar to European countries [2]. These results of mapping might be a meaningful tool for Asian governments to understand the status quo for eco-innovation and improve their capacity for coordinating the mix of policies while balancing supply-side and demand-side instruments. Figure 3: Mapping supply- and demand-side instruments for eco-innovation in 17 Asian countries. [Note] Bangladesh: BD; Brunei Darussalam: BN; Cambodia: KH; China: CN; India: IN; Indonesia: ID; Japan: JP; Republic of Korea: KR; Lao PDR: LA; Malaysia: MY; Mongolia: MN; Myanmar: MM; Pakistan: PK; Philippines: PH; Singapore: SG; Thailand: TH; Vietnam: VN. The color used for the name of the country indicates its economic development stage: red: stage 1; blue: stage 1–2; orange: stage 2; yellow: stage 1–2; black: stage 3. In conclusion, this study focuses on co-ordination of policy towards eco-innovation. It provides information on institutional framework conditions for eco-innovation in Asian countries by analyzing policy instruments. It helps us to understand the different approaches and efforts to eco-innovation by Asian countries. The research findings contribute to extending our knowledge about the combination of policy instruments in Asia [24]. However, there are several limitations in terms of data collection and interpretation. Publicly available data on eco-innovation policies in the selected Asian countries are scarce. We primarily depended on data that was written in English to analyze eco-innovation policies in the selected Asian countries. Given the lack of data, we could not conduct in-depth analyses of eco-innovation policies. Eco-innovation policies in the developing and least developed countries can be known through case studies. In future research, case studies on eco-innovation should be conducted through collaborations with local experts. The analysis of cross-country patterns of eco-innovation adoption should shed light on different contexts and socioeconomic factors [70]. This study examined the structure of policy instruments for eco-innovation in selected countries. Policy instrument choice does not directly affect environmental performance [24]. Further research is needed to investigate how policy instruments were implemented in each country. This research focused on state-led eco-innovation.