Determinants of firms' greenness towards sustainable development: A multi‐country analysis

Abstract

A higher greenness of firms is crucial for the mitigation of climate change and other environmental pollution problems. This paper analyses the drivers of a greening of firms from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Three theoretical concepts—the stakeholder theory, the institutional theory and the resource‐based view—contribute to identifying the determinants of firms' greenness. In our empirical analysis based on recent World Bank data, greenness is measured by different environmentally related measures firms adopted over the preceding 3 years, such as more climate‐friendly energy generation, waste minimisation and the improvement of lighting systems. The results of probit and negative binomial regressions show that a high affectedness by environmental regulation triggers firms' greenness. In addition to this ‘forced greenness’, the results demonstrate that innovative firms are more likely to realise environmentally related measures. This finding also holds for firms affected by extreme weather events. A highly competitive environment is negatively connected with greenness. The corporate social responsibility of family‐owned firms seems to be higher than non‐family‐owned firms.

Sustainable innovation in agriculture: Building competitiveness and business sustainability

“…Not only the development of the world's population but also constant changes in the climate, ecosystems and the business environment, as well as their harmful effects on society (Chalupa et al 2021;Lee and Trimi 2021) emphasise the need to address responsible and sustainable innovation across a broad context (Saha et al 2017;Cillo et al 2019;Horbach et al 2022), using a knowledge approach (Hadj 2020). This applies to all sectors, including agriculture, forestry and food.…”

Integrated application of selected elements of sustainability, circular economy, bioeconomy, and environmental management system in guesthouses

“…This is in addition to their focus on building long-term relationships and maintaining guest loyalty (Assaker 2020). Sustainable development is based on three pillars (Klarin 2018;Horbach et al 2022): the concept of development (socio-economic development following environmental constraints), the concept of needs (allocation of resources to increase the quality of life), and the concept of future generations (sustainable use of resources in line with the needs of future generations). add that it is about managing the triple profit, which Belz and Binder (2017) define in the definition of sustainable business as economic, social, and ecological.…”

Ecological development practices of marine ranching enterprises in China: Case studies of early movers

“…Similar to stakeholder theory, institutional theory suggests that firms must conform to different institutional forces in their decision‐making related to ecological development (Horbach et al, 2022; Zhang, Tay, et al, 2022). These pressures from different stakeholders can be understood as coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures.…”

“…Passaro et al (2022), meanwhile, suggested that the size of enterprises will cause the driving effects of stakeholders on ecological development to be different. Similar to stakeholder theory, institutional theory suggests that firms must conform to different institutional forces in their decisionmaking related to ecological development (Horbach et al, 2022;Zhang, Tay, et al, 2022). These pressures from different stakeholders can be understood as coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures.…”

“…Based on the resource‐based view, the natural resource–based view advocates incorporating sustainability into firms' activities, even if it might not be immediately profitable (Sehnem et al, 2022). That said, introducing ecological sustainability can lend firms a first‐mover advantage (Gong, Xie, et al, 2022; Horbach et al, 2022). Upward and Jones (2016) suggested that the worsening state of ecological degradation calls for radically different ways of doing business.…”