Go Green and Entrepreneurial Growth Aspirations: Evidence from Multi-country Small Businesses

Abstract

To account for the changing nature of entrepreneurial growth aspiration (EGA), we shift our focus from individual-level factors (e.g., human, and social capital) to firm-level strategic factors. We theorise that go green, as one of the emerging strategic orientations, can positively influence EGA for small businesses. The positive association between go green and EGA is positively mediated by strategic engagements in (a) innovation and (b) signalling (i.e., environmental certification). In addition, we establish that such positive association is stronger in economies where there are lower levels of environmental institutional pressures. The empirical analysis of 28,000 small businesses in 41 economies is largely consistent with our predictions. We further report that the indirect mechanism of environmental certification is more important than that of innovation in go green-EGA link.