Corporate Environmental Behavior Research Articles

How Does Corporate Environmental Strategy Contribute to Voluntary Environmental Behavior? Influence of Psychological Green Climate, Firms’ Size, and Employees’ Age

Considering the gravity of issues, the present study investigates the influence of corporate environmental strategy (CES) on the voluntary environmental behavior (VEB) of employees along with the potential moderating variables. The research questions and hypotheses are built based on the essence of an integrated theory of corporate environmental behavior and social identity theory. Data were collected from numerous organizations and analyzed following the deductive reasoning approach. Partial least square–based structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. The result highlighted that CES influences psychological green climate (PGC), which leads to an effect on VEB. We also examined the moderating effects of employees’ age, firms’ size on the influence of CES on PGC, and the PGC on VEB. The result showed that the moderating effect of age affects the influence of CES on PGC and other’s influences are not found significant. Managerial implications were also discussed.

Revisiting Stakeholder Theory and Environmentalism: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

In this study, we evaluated corporate environmental activities within the framework of stakeholders’ concerns and taking an emerging economy as the field of study. This paper integrates the stakeholder theory and corporate environmental behavior to develop a model and then tests this model in an emerging economy context. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey from managers operating in a variety of industries in Pakistan. A structural equation modeling technique has been used for data analysis. Results revealed that regulatory bodies are the most significant while media, customers, and activists are insignificant stakeholders. Top management commitment is identified as an important endogenous and exogenous variable.

Movements, Societal Crisis, and Organizational Theory

Abstract Public health crises test the robustness of institutions, and the current COVID-19 pandemic is no exception The spread of the virus and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths have laid bare the fragility of governments? capacities to protect their citizens, and it has strained otherwise normally functioning institutions like higher education The pandemic has exposed dramatic economic and racial inequalities, especially in countries without strong welfare infrastructure Grievances that were once contained by relatively prosperous times are now raging on the surface

Internal Control Quality, Enterprise Environmental Protection Investment and Finance Performance: An Empirical Study of China's A-Share Heavy Pollution Industry.

As an important measure of enterprise governance, internal control can enhance the organizational rationality of the enterprise, ensure that the enterprise consciously assumes social responsibility for the protection of the natural environment and resources, and promote the sustainable development of the national economy. Using data from China’s A-share heavy pollution industry listed companies from 2009 to 2018, this study explored the relationships among internal control quality, enterprise environmental protection investment, and financial performance. The results show that the quality of internal control has a significant positive impact on enterprise environmental protection investment and financial performance. Enterprise environmental protection investment has a significant positive impact on financial performance and plays a partial intermediary role in the positive impact of internal control quality on financial performance. While expanding the theory of resource-based concepts, this study clarified the positive impact of corporate environmental management and practical behavior on corporate value and provides a theoretical basis for companies to actively implement environmental protection responsibilities, strengthen internal environmental management capabilities, and enhance corporate value. At the same time, it also provides a basis for the government to issue relevant environmental protection policies, strengthen enterprise internal control construction guidelines, and encourage third-party organizations to evaluate the effectiveness of enterprise internal control.

When is State Capitalism More Sustainable? Minority State Ownership and Environmental Performance

Using resource dependence and institutional theories, we examine how minority state ownership affects firm’s environmental performance across different national contexts. Minority state ownership is increasingly common globally as a form of government control over business. We propose that it makes firms more dependent on governments and responsive to home country institutional pressures and state expectations for environmental protection. We find empirical support for our model—minority state owned firms have better environmental performance, especially in countries with stronger pro-environmental regulatory and normative institutions and weaker pro-environmental cultural-cognitive institutions. Our study contributes to research on how minority state ownership affects corporate environmental behavior by developing a novel integration of resource dependence and institutional theories, and uncovering nuances in how different institutional pillars influence organizations.

New media environment, environmental information disclosure and firm valuation: Evidence from high-polluting enterprises in China

With firms gradually becoming the subject for energy consumption and environment pollution, it is pivotal that they disclose corporate environmental information for social supervision and fulfillment of social responsibility. Thus, it has been a hot topic as to how to improve the quality of corporate environmental information disclosure (EID). Drawing on the data of listed companies in the high-polluting industries between 2014 and 2017 in China, this paper conducts an empirical study on three questions with an in-depth investigation: (1) does the new media environment help in improving corporate EID quality; (2) whether this relationship is influenced by the property ownership of the corporate and local economic pressure; (3) what is the economic consequence of corporate EID. Our findings indicate that new media environment has a significantly positive effect on corporate EID quality, especially to state-owned enterprises. And firms with higher environmental disclosure quality enjoy better firm valuation. These findings help identify new driving factors of corporate EID and confirm that new media environment has performed a supplementary role in regulating corporate environmental behaviors, which can help develop green finance and promote ecological civilization.

Senior Executives' Political Connections and Corporate Environmental Behavior—Empirical Research From the Chinese A‐Share Market

AbstractThis thesis analyzed the cross‐section data of 630 non‐financial listed enterprises and adopts a logit model to estimate the relationships between political relations and corporate environmental behavior. The paper also adopts an ordered logit method to estimate the marginal impact of political connections to enterprises’ disclosure of information on environment and sustainable development. Through analysis, this thesis found that political connections lower the probability for enterprises to disclose information on environment and sustainable development. With the Level III scoring method, this article classified the performances of disclosing corporate environmental information into three levels. It is found that corporate political connections increase the probability for enterprises not to disclose any environmental information and lower the probability for enterprises to refer to GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

Mutual dependence and selective coercion: corporate environmental investment among Chinese private firms

Neo-institutionalism suggests unified coercion which overlooks the mutual dependent relationship between state and businesses in developmental societies. This study incorporates the insight of mutual dependence, and proposes a model of selective coercion to explain how the state coerces Chinese private firms for environmental investment. Findings reveal that the local state is more likely to coerce firms that are more dependent on the state through political connections and less likely to coerce those which are highly important to local tax revenues and those which are substantially costly for regulation enforcement. Provinces that are more dependent on tourism economy exert harder coercion on firms, whereas those that place higher priority on economic development exert lighter coercion on firms. This study contributes to the literature of the neo-institutionalist theory and corporate environmental behavior.

Environmental Externalities of Activism

We study the effect of hedge fund activism on corporate environmental behaviors. Using plant-chemical level data from the EPA, we find that activism campaigns are associated with a 17 percent drop in emissions for chemicals at plants of targeted firms. Campaigns are associated with changes across a wide range of chemicals, including those emitted into the air, water, and ground and those that are harmful to humans. Evidence suggests this change in environmental behavior stems from a drop in production rather than an increase in abatement activities. The net effect on environmental efficiency is positive, with emissions falling by 8 percent per unit of output. Overall, our findings highlight the idea that the benefits of activism are not necessarily confined to shareholders, but may also extend to other stakeholders (e.g., the local community) affected by firms' emissions.

The integration role of governmental information disclosure platform

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a feasible scheme for local governments to regulate corporate environmental data fraud and to discuss whether the influence of the construction of online information disclosure platform on the environmental behavior of enterprises is better than the offline spot check.Design/methodology/approachUnder the background of changing environmental fees into taxes in China, this paper conducts evolutionary game analysis between local governments and enterprises in view of the existing problem of environmental data fraud. Furthermore, through the introduction of government information disclosure platform, this paper discusses the impact of the integration of direct government regulation and indirect public concern regulation on the evolution of environmental behavior of both sides. Finally, the evolutionary game is simulated by adopting system dynamics to analyses the implementation effect of different cases on the game process and game equilibrium.FindingsThe results showed that the introduction of information disclosure platform mechanism can effectively suppress the fluctuations existing in the game play and stabilize the game. Moreover, it is worth noting that the regulatory effect of local governments investing part of the monitoring cost in the construction of online information platform is proved to be better than that of putting all the monitoring cost into offline investigation. While optimizing the monitoring cost allocation, the local government still needs to attach great importance to organically combine the attention of the public and media with the governmental official platform.Practical implicationsThe obtained results confirm that the proposed model can assist local government in refining the effects of their environmental regulatory decisions, especially in the case of corporate data fraud under environmental tax enforcement.Originality/valuePrevious literature only suggested that local governments should reduce the cost of supervision to change the corporate behavior to a better direction, but no further in-depth study. Thus, this study fills the gap by discussing the positive transformation effect of local government cost allocation scheme on corporate environmental behavior.

Money Talks: The Environmental Impact of China's Green Credit Policy

AbstractThis study examines the impact of China's green credit policy on the environment. In particular, we consider an initiative that requires all banks to base their loan decisions on corporate environmental performance. This is an important issue since it is globally gaining popularity to leverage bank loans as an avenue to enforce corporate environmental responsibility. Moreover, there are only a handful of empirical investigations in relation to the impacts of credit constraint on corporate environmental behaviors and strategies. This research also provides useful insights on how to enhance environmental regulation enforcement, using the Environmental Protection Bureau in partnership with local banks to exert a creditable threat of financial constraint on unfavorable environmental outcomes. Using the synthetic control method and difference‐in‐differences analysis, we find that this policy has significantly motivated firms, particularly those firms with a higher dependence on external financing, to reduce water pollution. We further discover that the policy compels firms to favor pollution prevention at the source instead of end‐of‐pipe treatments, since the policy imposes a long‐term credit constraint on pollution.

Exploring external and internal pressures on the environmental behavior of paper enterprises in China: A qualitative study

AbstractAs one of the typical high‐polluting and high‐energy‐consuming industries in China, the paper industry's environmental behavior has become the focus of a range of stakeholders, policy makers, and the whole society because the industry's business activities are a main source of environmental pollution and contribute to massive energy consumption. This study used a qualitative approach to examine the relative importance of external and internal pressures (EP and IP) in driving the environmental behavior of paper enterprises in China. Based on grounded theory, this study aimed to examine the EP and IP on the environmental behavior of paper enterprises to create a comprehensive theoretical model based on grounded theory code analysis. It was found that government pressure, economic pressure, social pressure, and IP have direct and significant positive effects on the corporate environmental behavior (CEB) of paper enterprises in China. Furthermore, government, economic, and social pressures have indirect and significant positive effects on CEB through other pressures. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of these four pressures and provides policy implications.

Does stakeholder engagement through corporate social and environmental behaviors affect innovation?

Firms often engage with their internal and external stakeholders to enrich their knowledge base and augment innovation. An important yet under-examined mechanism to tap into knowledge stakeholders can provide is corporate social and environmental behaviors (CSEB) that firms undertake. This study examines the impact of stakeholder engagement through CSEB on firm investment in innovation. Drawing arguments from the knowledge-based view (KBV), stakeholder theory, and the upper echelons perspective, we argue that undertaking higher levels of corporate social and environmental behaviors lead to better innovation outcomes through different pathways. We test our proposed model on a sample of Fortune 500 firms and find that while corporate social behaviors (CSB) have a direct positive effect on firms' subsequent R&D investments, the impact of corporate environmental behaviors (CEB) on innovation is conditioned by executive tenure. We contribute to innovation, CSB, and CEB literatures by clarifying different mechanisms through which CSB and CEB impact innovation.

A facts panel on corporate social and environmental behavior: Decreasing information asymmetries between producers and consumers through product labeling

This study focuses on information asymmetries between producers and consumers. Mandatory product labeling usually provides little information on a producer's social and environmental behavior. The authors therefore, propose a new product label, a facts panel on Corporate Social and Environmental Behavior (CSEB Facts Panel), and test its effects on consumer response. This study contributes to sustainability research by testing consumers' reactions to simultaneous, and potentially incongruent, information on social and environmental behavior on products. In four experimental studies 376 European and 126 US consumers evaluated food items and a cellphone that carried the CSEB Facts Panel. The results demonstrate that the CSEB Facts Panel empowers consumers to discern between responsible and irresponsible corporate behavior. Furthermore, the results show when consumers face a tradeoff between social responsibility and environmental responsibility, social responsibility is more important to consumers and individual difference variables, such as social consciousness and environmental consciousness, can influence consumers' responses to the CSEB Facts Panel. On a practical level this study shows that the CSEB Facts Panel could be a differentiation tool for companies adopting sustainable business models and that a government sanctioned CSEB Facts Panel could be an incentive for companies to conduct their businesses more responsibly.

Evolutionary Game Analysis and Stability Control Scenarios of Corporate Environmental Behavior Inspection in China

This paper explores the use of evolutionary game theory to describe the interactions between the stakeholders in China’s corporate environmental behavior inspection system, which includes the State Administration of the government, public participation, and enterprises in tripartite game model for environmental pollution control exist in the process on the basis of information asymmetry. The simulation results show that the strategy selections of the three stakeholders fluctuate repeatedly, which indicates that the evolutionary stable strategy does not exist in the current interactions between the stakeholders. Therefore, the dynamic penalty control scenario and an optimized dynamic penalty-incentive control scenario were proposed to control the fluctuations and then simulated again. And the simulation results indicated that the dynamic penalty control scenario can effectively restrain the fluctuations and make stakeholder interactions more stable. The analysis and results of this paper are to help decision-support for environmental governance.

Investigating external and internal pressures on corporate environmental behavior in papermaking enterprises of China

As China's ecological environmental problem becomes severe, corporate environmental behavior (CEB) has become the focus of a range of stakeholders, policy makers and the whole society since the operating activities of companies is the main source of environmental pollution. This study used a questionnaire survey and structural equation model (SEM) to examine the relative importance of external and internal pressures (EIP) on driving CEB. Data was obtained from 702 papermaking companies in China. The mechanism of EIP effects on CEB was tested employing SEM through path analysis, using AMOS 21.0. The results showed that government pressure, economic pressure and internal pressure played significant positive roles in environmental behavior of papermaking companies in China. Economic pressure was the most important factor on environmental behaviors (including defensive, accommodative and proactive behaviors) of papermaking companies. Furthermore, the role of internal pressure on CEB (defensive and proactive) was second only to economic pressure, while the role of government pressure on CEB was much weaker than our expectation. However, the role of social pressure, which was imposed by general public and environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), was not significant. Thus, policy makers should emphasize on the interactions of economic mechanism, government regulation and internal incentive mechanism to stimulate firms to adopt active environmental behavior. More concerns from the general public shall be addressed to enhance their driving effect on CEB in Chinese papermaking industry.

Green from the Inside? Corporate Environmental Behavior and Corporate Governance Configurations

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between corporate governance and corporate greenhouse gas emissions. Firms differ in the extent of emissions even when controlling for sector, s...

Factors that influence corporate environmental behavior: empirical analysis based on panel data in China

In general, it is recognized that both external pressures and individual corporate characteristics drive enterprises to adopt active environmental behavior. However, few empirical studies have attempted to determine the relative importance of these different sources of external pressure and individual corporate characteristics. Using panel data for 30 provinces and municipalities in China between 2004 and 2013, we tested the relationships between these different factors and corporate environmental behavior by building panel models for the national sample and subsamples from the three regions of China. The results showed that pressures from governmental environmental regulation, consumers, and shareholders, as well as individual corporation characteristics had significant positive driving effects on corporate environmental behavior, where government environmental regulation had the most important effect. However, our results did not confirm that social pressure is a statistically significant source of change. We propose a series of policy implications based on these test results, which may encourage enterprises to implement better environmental behavior.

Getting to the Heart of Corporate Sustainability: The Role of Managerial Values and Motivation in the Mongolian Mining Industry

Corporate sustainability is often instantiated within a firm on a continuum, ranging from decoupling behaviors to substantive sustainability actions. Prior research has considered organizational and institutional predictors of this phenomenon, but to date, the role of micro-level mechanisms has been largely overlooked. Yet, individual value orientation and motivation are key indicators of pro-environmental behavior. We consider how values drive a manager’s end goals, and influence the firm’s environmental strategy. We also explore how the manager’s cognitive motivation – specifically promotion and prevention regulatory focus – moderates these effects. We test our model using quantitative survey with executives in the Mongolian mining industry. While our findings show a significant effect between altruistic value orientation and environmental strategy, there is a lack of direct effects by egoistic and biospheric value orientations. Instead, a manager’s regulatory focus is a boundary condition that affects how egoistic and biospheric values are expressed in corporate environmental behavior.

How Does Environmental Irresponsibility Impair Corporate Reputation? A Multi‐Method Investigation

AbstractSustainable development has received worldwide attention. Recent studies on corporate environmental behavior have called for research from the specific stakeholder's perspective (i.e., consumer) on the topic of going green. Based on reputation theory, this paper employed a secondary data analysis and three experiments to highlight the influence of environmental irresponsibility on corporate reputation perceived by consumers. Coherent results showed that environmental irresponsibility negatively affected corporate reputation and perceived corporate ethics served as a mediator. Furthermore, corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities could alleviate the harmful consequences of irresponsible behavior by moderating the mediating role of perceived corporate ethics in determining the influence of environmental irresponsibility. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment