Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Investigating external and internal pressures on corporate

environmental behavior in papermaking enterprises of China
Zheng-Xia He a, Wen-Xing Shen a, *, Qin-bin Li b, Shi-Chun Xu c, Bin Zhao b, Ru-Yin Long c,
Hong Chen c
a
College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
b
Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering (JIFRESSE) and Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, University of California,
Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
c
Management School, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As China's ecological environmental problem becomes severe, corporate environmental behavior (CEB)
Received 2 May 2017 has become the focus of a range of stakeholders, policy makers and the whole society since the operating
Received in revised form activities of companies is the main source of environmental pollution. This study used a questionnaire
24 August 2017
survey and structural equation model (SEM) to examine the relative importance of external and internal
Accepted 10 October 2017
pressures (EIP) on driving CEB. Data was obtained from 702 papermaking companies in China. The
Available online 11 October 2017
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
Keywords:
Corporate environmental behavior
positive roles in environmental behavior of papermaking companies in China. Economic pressure was
External and internal pressures the most important factor on environmental behaviors (including defensive, accommodative and pro-
Papermaking enterprises active behaviors) of papermaking companies. Furthermore, the role of internal pressure on CEB
China (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 regu-
lation 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.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction urging enterprises to implement environmental behavior is an

The ecological environmental problem has become increasingly
serious with the rapid economic development of China. As the main
body of economic development, companies are major contributors
to pollutant emissions and environmental deterioration, and are
therefore increasingly criticized for causing many environmental
issues such as climate change and depletion of natural resources.
Therefore, CEB has attracted the attention of a range of stake-
holders, policy makers and the whole society. To some extent,
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hezhengxia79@163.com (Z.-X. He), swx@njfu.edu.cn
(W.-X. Shen), qli@atmos.ucla.edu (Q.-b. Li), xushichun78@163.com (S.-C. Xu),
zhaob1206@ucla.edu (B. Zhao), longruyin@163.com (R.-Y. Long), hongchenxz@
163.com (H. Chen).
effective means to solve the current ecological environmental
problems. Since the environmental behaviors of Chinese companies
have been influenced by both external pressures (including gov-
ernments, investors, surrounding residents) and internal pressures
such as employees (Clark, 2005), a systematic analysis of the effects
of EIP on CEB is of great importance for solving these ecological
problems.
Since reform and opening up, China has introduced a series of
regulatory policies, despite its image as a bad student. These pol-
icies can be typically classified as a regulative model in the past (Liu
et al., 2010). Command and control measures have long been
dominant in China's industrial pollution control, while market-
based environmental instruments have lagged behind. In the
early stage, command and control measures have played an active
role in regulation, but there are still a lot of drawbacks. In the past,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.115
0959-6526/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1194 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
environmental protection in China was mainly enforced by
governmental regulation from top to bottom, with less public
participation. At present, with environmental NGOs continuing to
expand and gradually becoming an important force, the public has
played an active role in improving the environmental awareness of
the whole society as well as changing CEB (Zhou and Ji, 2009). Some
studies also showed that market factors have played more active
roles in stimulating Chinese companies to implement environ-
mental behavior (Liu et al., 2010). According to legitimacy theory,
higher polluting companies in China are more likely to go beyond
basic compliance with government environmental rules and fulfill
higher environmental values (Liu and Anbumozhi, 2009). Some of
them have started certain proactive environmental behavior like
self-servingly disclosing of objective and verifiable environmental
information to build stakeholder's trust and their own legitimacy
(G.J.M. Braam et al., 2016). Alternative approaches such as eco-
nomic incentives and business-leading voluntary initiatives, and
environmental information disclosure strategies should be added
to enhance the interplays between the firms and their stakeholders
for achieving better environmental goals (Henriques and Sadorsky,
1996).
Therefore, it has become one of the burning issues to make an
objective evaluation and review of the relative importance of EIP on
driving CEB, so as to effectively identify those policy measures to
which enterprises make positive reactions. Many studies have
focused on a single factor or several factors and have not been
aimed at specific industries. Although there are some studies
focusing on papermaking industry (Silvo et al., 2009; Popp et al.,
2011; Barla, 2007), they considered either only a few factors or
only the direct effects. In contrast, our paper employs an integrated
approach which takes indirect effects into account. At present,
wastewater pollution has become one of the most serious envi-
ronmental problems in China, and the papermaking industry is one
of the key industries causing wastewater pollution. As Chinese
papermaking enterprises, mostly with small scales, mainly use non
timber raw materials and relatively backward equipment, their
wastewater and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) emissions ac-
count for the largest proportion among all industrial enterprises
(Niu et al., 2016). Generally speaking, Chinese papermaking enter-
prises face severe environmental protection pressure and resource
pressure (Li et al., 2013). Therefore, it is typical and important to
study the environmental behavior of Chinese papermaking
enterprises.
EIP on CEB have already been the focus of a great deal of
research. Three such research streams could be identified in the
literature.
1.1. External pressures
The first research stream focused on the effects of external
pressures. Most of these researches are based on new institutional
theory (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). New institutional theory
regards an organisation as an open system whose structure and
operation are subject to the institutional environment (Zhou, 1999;
Scott, 2002). The generally accepted elements such as concepts,
external norms, and values in the institutional environment induce
an organisation to adopt generally accepted structures and opera-
tional methods to obtain organizational legitimacy (DiMaggio and
Powell, 1983). Therefore, stakeholders, social factors, and political
factors in the institutional environment have important influences
on CEB (Bray et al., 2002). From this point of view, CEB can be
regarded as a social construction process in which companies
obtain organizational legitimacy. Many researches on external
pressures can be divided into three aspects.
1.1.1. Government pressure(GP)
Many researchers suggested that government regulation was an
important driving factor on CEB (Henriques and Sadorsky, 1996;
Dasgupta et al., 1998; Laplante and Rilstone, 1996; Saether, 2000;
Ytterhus and Synnestvedt, 1995; Pan, 2011; Chen, 2015). Gray and
Deily (1996) and Helland (1998) examined the effect of govern-
ment intervention on CEB in two sectors, the pulp industry and the
steel industry and confirmed the positive relationship between
governmental regulation and enterprise compliance. Based on the
samples of Standard & Poor's 500 companies, Khanna (2002)
indicated that governmental regulation drove companies to
develop internal environmental policies and implement environ-
mental standards. The above research suggested that governmental
regulation has a positive impact on CEB, and the effect of different
types of regulation instruments on CEB is different, some studies
showed that the impact of market-based regulation instruments on
environmental strategies of enterprises is far greater than admin-
istrative regulation instruments; while the impact of administra-
tive regulation instruments on enterprise technological progress is
far greater than market-based regulation instruments (Zhao et al.,
2015). Glicksman and Earnhart (2008) provided insights into the
influence of seven particular facility and firm features (including
effluent limit level and type, permit modifications, facility size,
capacity utilization, discharge volatility and ownership structure)
on the effectiveness of government interventions at improving
environmental performance of major facilities in the chemical
industry.
1.1.2. Social pressure(SP)
The general public is playing a more positive role in environ-
mental protection in developed countries and has become a critical
factor affecting CEB (Chen et al., 2003; Blackman and Bannister,
1998; Pargal and Wheeler, 1996). Henriques and Sadorsky (1996)
and Dasgupta et al. (1998) suggested that self-reported commu-
nity pressure has a significant effect on CEB. Studies have also
explored the impact of community characteristics on different
kinds of CEB, such as decisions on enterprise location, pollution
abatement costs, and the extent of polluter compliance with reg-
ulations (Hamilton, 1993; Pargal and Wheeler, 1996; Earnhart,
2004).
In China, some communities are playing an active role in urging
companies to improve environmental performance (Zhang et al.,
2008). As one of the most important environmental stakeholders,
the active participation of the general public in environmental
management can not only reduce the cost of social management,
but also help to reduce the losses of environmental resource caused
by market failure and government failure. Therefore, urging Chi-
nese enterprises to actively implement environmental behavior
urgently needs the mutual constraints and cooperation between
the government and the general public (Xiong, 2007). Xie (2014)
adopted government regulation and media governance theories
to study the influence of the government and the media supervi-
sion on CEB of Chinese listed companies in heavy polluting in-
dustries. The results showed that the social media had a significant
positive effect on CEB; in the case of perfect system and there is no
rent-seeking, government regulation can enhance the governance
function of the media. However, some studies did not find that
community is a key factor affecting CEB in China (Liu et al., 2010;
Cai et al., 2002).
1.1.3. Economic pressure(EP)
In addition to government pressure and social pressure, indus-
trial market pressure also affects CEB (Saether, 2000; Ytterhus and
Synnestvedt, 1995; Henriques and Sadorsky, 1995; Wang and
Cheng, 2015). In addition to shareholder pressure, government
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
pressure, and community pressure, Henriques and Sadorsky (1996)
indicated that a firm's formulation of an environmental plan is also
positively influenced by customer pressure. There is growing evi-
dence that firms that adopt proactive environmental management
strategies can become more efficient and competitive (Berry and
Rondinelli, 1998), and this was supported by Johnstone and
Labonne (2009). Bansal and Roth (2000) conducted a qualitative
study of the motivations that induce CEB and revealed three mo-
tivations: competitiveness, legitimation and ecological re-
sponsibility. Khanna (2002) indicated that economic factors such as
the threat of environmental liabilities and high compliance costs
with governmental regulations as well as market pressures play a
significant role in inducing CEB. According to Chen et al. (2003), the
greening of industry can be regarded as the changing process of the
firms' environmental reactions to the growing pressures coming
from governments, the public and markets. Economic research into
the impact of non-regulatory external factors on CEB has revealed
that interactions with suppliers and customers may provide man-
ufacturers with more effective solutions to environmental chal-
lenges (Prakash and Potoski, 2006; Vachon and Klassen, 2006).
Zhu et al. (2007) found that market pressures have become a
strong driving factor for Chinese automobile enterprises to adopt
green supply chain management (SCM). Based on the samples from
companies in Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan city group of China
and adopting SEM, Liu et al. (2013) suggested that government
pressure does not have direct driving effects on CEB, instead, CEB is
mainly driven by the market and efficiency. However, a Japanese
empirical study found that consumers of final products did not
have a significant effect on enterprise adoption of ISO 14001
(Kimitaka, 2009).
In developed and emerging market economies, the capital
market can react to environmental information and induce enter-
prises to adopt pollution control behavior (Lanoie et al., 1998;
Dasgupta et al., 2006). Dasgupta et al. (1998) suggested that, in
urging enterprises to adopt pollution controls, the role of govern-
ment regulation can be leveraged through the release of corporate
environmental performance information, which is very important
for developing countries with weak environmental supervision.
This is supported by empirical research by Gupta and Goldar
(2005). The authors found that release of bad environmental per-
formance leads to negative abnormal returns (up to 30%), so the
capital market usually penalises environmentally unfriendly
behavior. Obviously, most of the research have agreed that the
capital market has played a deterrent effect through market valu-
ation reduction, but some scholars suggested that this deterrent
effect is likely to be weak in the capital market driven by institu-
tional investors (Carpentier and Suret, 2015).
1.2. Internal pressures
The second research stream focused on the effects of internal
pressures (IP) on CEB. According to new institutional theory, en-
terprises adopt the same or similar CEB when facing the same or
similar institutional pressures. However, in reality some enterprises
take positive CEB, while other enterprises in the same industry
have not yet reached the minimum environmental standards; even
within the same business group, great differences in CEB exist be-
tween different subsidiaries (Howard-Grenville, 2005; Prakash,
2000). To explain this, some studies examined the effect of inter-
nal stakeholders and enterprise characteristics on CEB. Most of this
research has been based on stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984)
and organisation and management theory.
Internal stakeholders' pressure may be more important than
pressure from external stakeholders in driving CEB (Tatoglu et al.,
2015). Internal stakeholders include corporate managers and
1195
employees (Andersson and Bateman, 2000; Dong et al., 2014; Lu
and Abeysekera, 2014). Environmental management leading to
real performance improvements depends on the commitment of
top management and the participation and commitment of em-
ployees (O'hEocha, 2000).
In addition to internal stakeholders, enterprise characteristics
are also sources of internal pressure. In contrast to new institution
theory, organisation and management theory focuses on the effects
of enterprise characteristics on CEB. These characteristics include
enterprise scale (Welch et al., 2002; Liu and Anbumozhi, 2009),
financial status (Earnhart and Lizal, 2002; Lu and Abeysekera, 2014)
and enterprise culture (Wang and Juslin, 2009).
1.2.1. Management
Many researches have pointed out that strong support and
commitment of top management are key factors affecting CEB


(Angel del Brío et al., 2001; Gattiker and Carter, 2010). Chin and Pun
(1999) indicated that the commitment of top management is a
decisive factor affecting implementation of ISO 14001 in the prin-
ted circuit board (PCB) industry in Hong Kong. Henriques and
Sadorsky (1999) suggested that regardless of the criteria used in
corporate environmental management (CEM) system, it is unlikely
that an enterprise will achieve its expected environmental goals
unless CEM implementation has full support and strong commit-
ment from all members of the organisation, especially the top
management. Some studies pointed out that the environmental
awareness of management plays an effective role in urging CEB
(Azzone et al., 1997). According to Stone et al. (2004), truly effective
CEB implementation is difficult if managers hold a traditional
defensive attitude. In contrast, strong commitment and support by
managers can avoid negative public attention and help to obtain
stakeholder support (Bansal and Roth, 2000). Furthermore, some
studies explored the effects of the environmental values, attitude,
and perception of executives on CEB (Sharma, 2000; Murillo-Luna
et al., 2008).
Regarding managers as one of the important mediating factors,
based on the upper echelon theory and the reputation theory and
using samples of Chinese manufacturing listed companies from
2012 to 2015, Li and Zhang (2016) empirically tested the correlation
between management capability and corporate environmental re-
sponsibility and showed that management capability has a positive
impact on the choice of whether to take environmental re-
sponsibility and environmental responsibility level.
1.2.2. Employees
Positive CEB can stimulate employee enthusiasm and pride.
Under the premise of enhancing green development strategy of
global enterprises, more and more employees increasingly want
their employer to implement active environmental behavior.
Dechant and Altman (1994) indicated that the viewpoints of em-
ployees on CEB influence their willingness to work for the enter-
prise. In an investigation of global managers, 68% agreed that
organizations with adverse CEB will find it increasingly difficult to
recruit and retain high-quality staff (Fischer and Schot, 1993).
Therefore, implementation of positive CEB is fundamental to
attracting and retaining not only customers but also talented em-
ployees. For many firms, the shift to proactive environmental
management is driven by pressures not only from governments,
but also from customers, employees, and competitors (Berry and
Rondinelli, 1998).
Bansal and Roth (2000) suggested that the attitude of employees
within enterprises has played an important role in the choice of
CEB, because the implementation of CEB will obviously affect the
vested interests of employees within enterprises. Internal pressures
have become the significant drivers which induce corporate
1196 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
environmental management practices (Buysee and Verbeke, 2003).
Based on the samples from Chinese heavy polluting energy enter-
prises, Wang and Cheng (2015) explored the impact of compre-
hensive factors including employee environmental behavior on CEB
and showed that there were significant positive correlation be-
tween employee environmental behavior and CEB.
1.2.3. Enterprise characteristics
Studies about enterprise characteristics focused on enterprise
size, financial status and enterprise culture.
First of all, enterprise size is an important factor affecting CEB
(Welch et al., 2002; Liu and Anbumozhi, 2009; Pan, 2011).
Compared to small and medium companies, large companies are
more likely to implement active CEB (Luethge and Han, 2012; Lu
and Abeysekera, 2014; Guan et al., 2005), possibly for the
following reasons. First, larger companies are more likely to deal
with pressure from governmental regulation and general public
and highly expected to release environmental and social informa-
tion. Second, larger companies face more environmental problems
and pressures (Christmann, 2004). Third, larger companies find it
easier to obtain resources, capabilities, and external support.
Fourth, Schumpeter innovation theory suggests that larger com-
panies are more likely to innovate and gain higher R & D gains
compared with small ones (Wang and Wang, 2012). Welch et al.
(2002) showed that enterprises with earlier adoption of ISO
14001 certification in Japan tended to be larger, greener, and less
driven by regulatory, market, or media pressures; conversely,
subsequent adopters of ISO 14001 tended to be smaller, less green,
and face more pressures from regulatory, competitive, and media
forces. Facing a lot of uncertainties in the society, larger companies
have adequate resources and strong infrastructure and they are
more likely to adopt CEB compared with smaller ones (Wang and
Wang, 2012). In addition, Hao et al. (2014) suggested that corpo-
rate social responsibility had greater impacts on green behavior of
larger state-owned enterprises than on that of smaller private
enterprises.
In addition, financial status is also another important factor
affecting CEB. Earnhart and Lizal (2002) made an empirical analysis
of unbalanced panel data for Czech enterprises during 1993e1998
and indicated that successful financial status stimulated enterprises
to adopt active CEB. Joshi and Gao (2009) explored the factors
inducing multinational corporations to post their corporate envi-
ronmental disclosure, and showed that companies in a good
financial status have a propensity to voluntarily disclose more
environmental information. Adopting new institutional theory,
Moon and Bae (2011) explored how state-level institutional pres-
sure and organizational attributes affect decisions to participate in
the US Energy Star for Buildings (ESB) program. The empirical
studies also suggest that a decision to participate in ESB is more
likely to be affected by economic factors than by institutional
pressures. Lu and Abeysekera (2014) empirically explored the ef-
fects of corporate internal characteristics on environmental infor-
mation disclosure of Chinese listed firms and indicated that, larger
firms with strong financial condition are more likely to be subject to
public scrutiny and tend to disclose more social and environmental
information.
Many scholars have suggested that sustainable oriented culture
has an important effect on CEB (Post and Altman, 1994; Welford,
1995; Crane, 1995). Kitazawa and Sarkis (2000) suggested that
enterprise culture transformation is an essential factor for suc-
cessful implementation of CEB. Top management should cultivate a
deep-rooted strong culture under which employees are free to
participate in environmental performance improvement without
much intervention (Daily and Huang, 2001; Govindarajulu and
Daily, 2004). Howard-Grenville (2006) explored the role of
organizational culture and subculture on CEB, and suggested that
multiple subcultures led to different explanations and CEB. Thus,
differences among subcultures and the characteristics of their re-
lationships can explain differences in CEB implementation.
1.3. Comprehensive influential factors
The third stream examined the driving effect of comprehensive
influential factors on CEB (Guan et al., 2005; Lan, 2008; Pan, 2011;
Wang and Cheng, 2015). Zhang et al. (2007) suggested that the
growing pressures from governments, communities and markets
played various roles in promoting CEB in different development
stages. Government regulation was the major pressure initially.
However, communities and markets have become the determinant
factors as they play more active roles in environmental protection.
Based on samples of more than 200 enterprises in Changsha,
Zhuzhou and Xiangtan and adopting principal component analysis
and SEM, Zhou (2011) examined the driving mechanism of CEB
from four aspects: enterprise system, enterprise strategy, enter-
prise social responsibility and enterprise organisation ability. Using
panel data for 30 provinces in China between 2004 and 2013, He
et al. (2016) showed that pressures from governmental environ-
mental regulation, consumers, and shareholders, as well as indi-
vidual corporation characteristics had significant positive driving
effects on CEB, where government environmental regulation had
the most important effect.
Our review of the relevant literature revealed some knowledge
gaps in the existing research. Due to differences in research
methods and selected samples, the existing studies have not
reached consensus on the range of influential factors of CEB, and
most of them have only considered a few internal or external fac-
tors affecting CEB. In other words, most of the existing studies were
not systematic and comprehensive, yet the conceptual model has
not been put forward. This is particularly true for the papermaking
firms in China. Furthermore, the existing studies have not agreed
on the action mechanism of various factors on CEB: most of them
have only considered the direct effects of these factors on CEB,
while much less attention has been paid to their indirect effects
through other factors. As a comprehensive statistical method which
combines factor analysis and path analysis, SEM has obvious merits
in the quantitative study of the interactions among various vari-
ables, and is very suitable for the comprehensive study of the direct
and indirect effects of various variables. With respect to the existing
literature, we tried to gain new insight and contribute to the un-
derstanding of the effects of EIP on CEB with the help of SEM in
significant two aspects. 1) Our study was based on a comprehensive
theoretical framework that considers two sets of pressures (i.e., the
EIP) for CEB with a number of factors in each set; most of the other
studies only provided a partial consideration of those pressures. 2)
We used SEM to examine both the direct and indirect effects of EIP
on CEB of papermaking firms in China; few studies have analyzed
both of them.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents
the methodology, questionnaire design, questionnaire tests, iden-
tification of critical factors, model selection and steps and model
specification. Section 3 presents the empirical results. Section 4
discusses the main results and Section 5 gives our conclusions
and policy implications.
2. Research methodology
The questionnaire investigation method was used as the main
tool for data collection, since it is a widely used method in studies
concerning environmental behavior, energy use and consumer
behavior (Wilson and Dowlatabadi, 2007; Pinsonneault and
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
Kraemer, 1993). The process of designing the questionnaire was as
follows: (1) specifying the domain of EIP on CEB and determining
the facets; (2) designing the items of different facets and refining
them; (3) testing the reliability and validity of the questionnaire.
Then we employ factor analysis and multiple linear regression
analysis to identify the key factors for CEB of papermaking enter-
prises. Finally, we make SEM specification and put forward research
hypothesis.
2.1. Questionnaire design
The effects of EIP on CEB were multidimensional constructs. In
order to specify the domain of each construct, an initial list of 34
facets of EIP was developed mainly based on the literature
(Henriques and Sadorsky, 1996; Stafford, 2002; Dasgupta et al.,
1998; Hamilton, 1993; Pargal and Wheeler, 1996; Earnhart, 2004;
Zhang et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2011, 2016). Then these facets
were reviewed by the respondents for in-depth interview from
universities and business communities. The selection criteria for
respondents included their understanding of CEB, their educational
level and specialties. Five-point Likert scales (one ¼ last important;
five ¼ most important) were used as measure. Of the 60 delivered
surveys, 35 responded, giving a response rate of 58.3%. The char-
acteristics of respondents, including gender, age, educational level
and job position can be seen in Table 1. After expert review, 12
facets were deleted due to low marks (less than 70).
Next, based on the literature, 72 items have been designed for
the remaining 22 facets, and Five-point Likert scales were used to
measure them. Before the formal investigation, a prototype of the
questionnaire with 22 facets and 72 items was pre-tested in Jiangsu
and Shandong. The pretested firms were Zhenjiang Gold East Paper
Co., Ltd, Zhenjiang Dadong Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd, Jiangyin Xinhao
Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd, and Shandong Asia Symbol Pulp & Paper Co.,
Ltd. According to the comments from the respondents of the pre-
test, three items were deleted, and the basic contents of the
questionnaire were determined (See Table 2).
2.2. Questionnaire tests and identification of key factors
On the basis of the final questionnaire, the formal investigation
was underway from February to July 2015, and data processing was
finished by the end of September 2015. Among the 300 paper
questionnaires sent by post and 700 questionnaires sent by email,
Table 1
The basic characteristics of respondents.
Respondent profiles Frequency
Gender
Male 19
Female 16
Age
35 12
36-50 18
51 5 14.3
Educational level
High school 3 8.6
University 22
Postgraduate 10
Job position
Top management 3 8.6
Environmental manager 16
Enterprise employee 8 22.9
Experts 8 22.9
Interview type
Face to face 15
Telephone interview 20
1197
172 paper questionnaires and 534 emails were returned. In addi-
tion, we made field investigation to 15 papermaking companies,
and obtained 15 usable questionnaires. After careful reviewing all
the returned questionnaires, we found 19 of them not usable, and
the effective rate was 97.4%. Therefore, this investigation sample
included 702 papermaking companies.
Then, SPSS 19.0 was adopted to test construct validity of the
questionnaire through factor analysis. An initial list of 10 facets for
the factors of CEB were developed (Table 2), and the 12 facets for
the factors of EIP were also developed (Table 3). Specifically, KMO
test was employed to determine whether these facets and items are
suitable for factor analysis, and Barlett's test of sphericity test was
used to determine whether there are interrelation between them
(Kaiser, 1974), which was actually the questionnaire validity test.
And these tests showed the forecast level of these facets and items
on CEB and EIP. After the validity test, the reliability test was
implemented for subscales and total scale. Specifically, the coeffi-
cient a proposed by L.J.Cronbach was used to test the reliability of
the questionnaire so as to determine the internal consistency and
stability of the total scale and subscales.
According to the criteria of KMO statistical value1 and Barlett's
test of sphericity test results (the significance probability of c2
should be less than 0.05), the correlation test results were shown in
Table 4: the KMO values of items in the subscales of CEB and EIP
were 0.711 and 0.772 respectively, which were more than 0.7 and
thus suitable for factor analysis. Meanwhile, c2 values for Barlett's
test of sphericity test were 174.836 and 1121.209 respectively; the
corresponding significant probability were 0.000 (far less than
0.05) and thus indicated the existence of correlation.
The internal reliability of the total scale was as follows: Cron-
bach's alpha coefficient (Cronbach, 1951) was 0.797, which indi-
cated that the reliability of the total scale was relatively high. As
shown in Table 5, Cronbach's alpha coefficients for government
pressure (GP), social pressure (SP), economic pressure (EP) and
internal pressure (IP) in EIP subscale were 0.741, 0.683, 0.779 and
0.659, respectively, which were all more than 0.60. The Cronbach's
alpha coefficients for environmental defensive behavior, environ-
mental accommodative behavior and environmental proactive
behavior were 0.663, 0.658, and 0.793, respectively, which were
also more than 0.60; therefore, the items for both subscales have
passed reliability test,2 which indicated that the investigation data
have relatively high reliability and were ready for the analysis of
SEM.
Based on the validity and reliability tests, factor analysis and
multiple linear regression analysis were adopted in some previous
studies (Ghosh and Jintanapakanont, 2004; Li and Chen, 2010; Lu,
2013), therefore, we also use these methods to identify the key
factors for environmental behavior of papermaking enterprises.
Percent (%)
Firstly, factor analysis was used to reduce the dimension of the 29
potential influential factors (items) for environmental behavior of
54.3
papermaking enterprises and 10 common factors were obtained,
45.7
the characteristic roots of which explained 74.856% of the overall
34.3
51.4
1
According to Kaiser (1974), the KMO value should be between 0 and 1, when the
KMO value is less than 0.50, it indicates that the items are not suitable for factor
analysis; when the KMO is between 0.50 and 0.60, it indicates that the items are
62.9
barely suitable for factor analysis, when the KMO value is between 0.60 and 0.70, it
28.6
indicates that the items are suitable for factor analysis, and when the KMO value is
between 0.70 and 0.80, it indicates that the items are well suitable for factor
analysis.
45.7 2
For the subscales, the greater the coefficients a, the better the internal con-
sistency and stability of the subscales, and the better the reliability of the subscales.
In the field of behavioral and social science, coefficients a should be more than 0.60,
when the score is lower than 0.50, it indicates that the reliability index of the
42.9
subscales are not so good, and revisions, additions or deletions should be made to
57.1
the items in the subscales.
1198 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211

Table 2
Description of factors, facets and items of CEB (N ¼ 702).

CEB Facets Items M SD High scores indicate that firms

Abiding by the papermaking raw material structure in the 12th Five Year 3 10.3827 1.89452 Defensive behavior of environmental
Plan of papermaking industry management (EM)
Accomplishing the target for the 12th Five Year Plan of papermaking industry 4 14.0988 3.42639 Defensive behavior of EM
Implementing cleaner production auditing 1 3.8519 0.55025 Accommodative behavior of EM
Setting up a special environmental protection department 2 4.1852 0.69121 Accommodative behavior of EM
The integration of environmental affairs departments and other functional departments 3 13.7160 1.07511 Accommodative behavior of EM
Establishing and implementing environmental performance monitoring system 7 5.3086 1.21081 Accommodative behavior of EM
Implementing environmental protection technology R & D in papermaking industry 2 7.8519 1.17379 proactive behavior of EM
Implementing environmental affairs training 4 15.0123 2.42123 proactive behavior of EM
Actively implementing environmental protection investment and contingency plans 9 28.8025 3.95733 proactive behavior of EM
The management actively participating in the corporate environmental affairs 5 3.3580 0.72987 proactive behavior of EM
Factors
Defensive behavior 7 12.241 4.464
Accommodative behavior 13 6.765 2.368
Proactive behavior 20 13.756 5.477

variance. Then, regarding the number of environmental behavior
practices of papermaking enterprises (namely the total scores of
items for CEB subscale) as the dependent variable and regarding
the ten common factors as independent variables, multiple linear
stepwise regression analysis was used to further identify the key
factors, and the conclusion was made as following, common factor
1, common factor 2, common factor 3, common factor 4, common
factor 7 and common factor 8 had significant positive effects on
environmental behavior of papermaking enterprises. Then
combining with the rotation component matrix through factor
analysis (the matrix showed the indicators on which common
factors had relatively great effects, and these indicators should be
key factors), the 20 key internal and external factors were obtained
as follows: (1) For GP, industry environmental access (flfg2), the
clause of comprehensive renovation (flfg3), the clause of merger
and reorganization (flfg4), regulations on prevention and control of
the three wastes (flfg5) and levy sewage charges (pwf1) had sig-
nificant positive effects on environmental behavior of papermaking
enterprises; (2) For SP, environmental complaints made by com-
munity (sqxf1), environmental petition made by community
(sqxf2), environmental petition made by NGOs (sqxf3) and envi-
ronmental complaints made by NGOs (sqxf4) had significant pos-
itive effects on environmental behavior of papermaking
enterprises; (3) For EP, the attention on CEB paid by customers
(lsxq1), green consumption tendency of consumers (lsxq2), exploit
new products to meet green demand of consumers (lsxq3), the role
of fulfilling environmental responsibility in improving image (jzz1),
the role of fulfilling environmental responsibility in increasing
profits (jzz2) and the impact of stockholders on CEB (gd1) had
significant positive effects on environmental behavior of paper-
making enterprises. (4) For IP, environmental awareness of the top
management (glc1), communication frequency between the top
management and governmental environmental protection
department (glc2), the attention on environmental affairs paid by
top management (glc3), education level of the employees (yg1) and
environmental awareness of the employees (yg2) had significant
positive effects on environmental behavior of papermaking
enterprises.
regression analysis, SEM has remarkable advantages as following
(Anderson and Gerbing, 1988; Bagozzi, 1984; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988):
(1) SEM has theoretical apriority. Its causal model must be on a
certain theoretical basis, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
used has more theoretical significance and is more detailed than
exploratory factor analysis. (2) It is suitable for handling multiple
dependent variables. (3) It has the potential for simultaneously
handling measurement and analysis. (4) It can accurately identify
and measure the complicated path model, which can be used to
analyze and predict the relationship among multiple variables and
for the path analysis of the causal model among variables.
AMOS is a powerful computer program that provides a tool for
SEM and can help to specify, assess, test and display the model in
the intuitive path diagram and thus verify the hypothetical rela-
tionship between the variables.
SEM is used to analyze the influence of EIP on CEB, which can be
divided into the following five steps:
(1) Model specification based on the literature and research
objectives, initially establish the relationship between observed
variables and latent variables and between various latent variables
so as to construct the relationship between variables through
setting the research hypothesis and rigorous reasoning. (2) CFA is
used to analyze the relationship between the observed variables
and latent variables, and the correlation between various factors.
(3) Model fitting The partial least squares, the linear structure
relation, the maximum likelihood estimation and the generalized
least squares are used to estimate the model parameters. (4) Model
assessment After getting the fitting results, the fitting indexes
should be used to evaluate the overall fitting of the model, such as
c2 =df , SRMR, NFI, NNFI, CFI, RMSEA and so on. (5) Model modifi-
cation Each model (the first fitted or modified), various fitting in-
dexes such as standard error, t value, standardized residuals,
correction index, parameter expected values should be checked to
help to determine how to modify the model. This step need to be
repeated again and again, and the final form of SEM is determined
in the end.
2.4. Model specification

2.3. Model selection and steps
In order to explore the effects of EIP on CEB, SEM was adopted.
As an important statistical method for modern behavior science
and quantization research in social field which combines factor
analysis with some traditional multivariate statistical analysis
technology such as regression analysis, SEM can identify, estimate
and verify various causal models. Compared with the traditional
According to the identification results of key internal and
external factors on environmental behavior of papermaking en-
terprises in section 2.2 and Tables 2 and 3, the latent variables and
observed variables of SEM are shown as Table 6.
The conceptual model constructed depends on the following
preconditions: whether or not an enterprise implements environ-
mental behavior depends on the perceived or applied pressures of
different stakeholders. As shown in Fig. 1, this study divides the
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
Table 3
Description of factors, facets and items of EIP (N ¼ 702).
EIP Facets Items M SD
Government pressure (GP)
Environmental laws and regulations risk 5 21.1235 2.03336
Routine inspection 2 7.0617 1.27814
Fines or penalties imposed by regulators 1 5.6049 1.34795
Collection of sewage charges 1 3.7901 0.83241
Social pressure (SP)
Environmental petition and complaint 4 5.7037 2.05818
made by community and NGOs
The public voice of news media 1 4.2346 1.41661
Economic pressure (EP)
Consumer green demand 3 11.2716 1.14031
Strong competition 4 15.3210 1.20236
Impact of suppliers 1 3.5185 0.67289
Impact of stockholders 1 3.9136 0.50491
Internal pressure (IP)
Impact of the management 3 12.6049 1.50565
Impact of the employees 3 9.6173 1.41922
Factor
GP 9 44.037 4.24395
SP 5 13.4938 2.62737
EP 9 37.4444 2.49499
IP 6 22.3827 1.94015
Table 4
KMO and Barlett's tests for items in CEB and EIP subscales.
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measurement with sampling sufficiency
Barlett test of sphericity Approx. Chi-Square
df
Sig.
High scores indicate
that firms
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of forceful legal
clause.
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of routine
inspection
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of fines or
penalties imposed by
regulators
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of collection of
sewage charges
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of
environmental petition
and complaint made by
community and NGOs
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of the influence
of the coverage
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of consumer
green demand
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of strong
competition
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of impact of
suppliers
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of impact of
stockholders
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of impact of the
management
Felt a lot of pressure as
a result of impact of the
employees
Items in CEB subscale
0.711
174.836
45
0.000
1199
Item design
flfg1(The enforcement of environmental laws and
regulations)
flfg2(Industry environmental access)
flfg3(The clause of comprehensive renovation)
flfg4(The clause of merger and reorganization)
flfg5(Regulations on prevention and control of the three
wastes)
dqjc1(Frequency of routine inspection)
dqjc2(Function of routine inspection)
cffj1(Fines or penalties)
pwf1(Levy sewage charges)
sqxf1 (Environmental complaints made by community)
sqxf2 (Environmental petition made by community)
sqxf3 (Environmental petition made by NGOs)
sqxf4 (Environmental complaints made by NGOs)
mtyx1(The public voice of news media)
lsxq1(The attention on CEB paid by customers)
lsxq2 (Green consumption tendency of consumers)
lsxq3 (Exploit new products to meet green demand of
consumers)
jzz1(The role of fulfilling environmental responsibility in
improving image)
jzz2(The role of fulfilling environmental responsibility in
increasing profits)
jzz3(Proportion of competitors who implement
environmental behavior)
jzz4(Impact of competitors who implement environmental
behavior)
gys1(The impact of suppliers on CEB)
gd1(The impact of stockholders on CEB)
glc1 (Environmental awareness of the top management)
glc2(Communication frequency between the top
management and governmental environmental protection
department)
glc3(The attention on environmental affairs paid by top
management)
yg1 (Education level of the employees)
yg2 (Environmental awareness of the employees)
yg3(The frequency of environmental complaints made by
employees)
Items in EIP subscale
0.772
1121.209
406
0.000
1200 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211

Table 5 different sources of pressure perceived by the enterprises into four

The coefficient value a for CEB and EIP subscales. categories: government, economic, society and internal. The sour-
Cronbach's alpha coefficient Items ces of government, economic and society can be understood as the
EIP
pressure from outside the enterprise. Among all these pressures, GP
Government pressure 0.741 4 is the only exogenous latent variable, which means that environ-
Social pressure 0.683 2 mental regulation pressure from the government will have influ-
Economic pressure 0.779 4 ence on all other endogenous latent variable (EP, SP, IP and CEB). In
Internal pressure 0.659 2
other words, GP is the only latent variable which not only has
CEB
Defensive behavior 0.663 2 significant direct positive effects on CEB, but also has significant
Accommodative behavior 0.658 4 indirect positive effects on CEB through all other pressures (EP, SP
Proactive behavior 0.793 4 and IP). In addition, this assumption is in strict accordance with the

Table 6
The latent variables and observed variables of EIP and CEB in SEM.

Latent variable Symbol Observed variable

EIP
Government pressure flfg2 Industry environmental access
flfg3 Clause of comprehensive renovation
flfg4 Clause of merger and reorganization
flfg5 Regulations on prevention and control of the three wastes
pwf1 Levy sewage charges
Social pressure sqxf1 Environmental complaints made by community
sqxf2 Environmental petition made by community
sqxf3 Environmental petition made by NGOs
sqxf4 Environmental complaints made by NGOs
Economic pressure lsxq1 The attention on CEB paid by customers
lsxq2 green consumption tendency of consumers
lsxq3 exploit new products to meet green demand of consumers
jzz1 The role of fulfilling environmental responsibility in improving image
jzz2 The role of fulfilling environmental responsibility in increasing profits
gd1 The impact of stockholders on CEB
Internal pressure yg1 education level of the employees
yg2 environmental awareness of the employees
glc1 Environmental awareness of the top management
glc2 Communication frequency between the top management and governmental environmental protection departments
glc3 The attention on environmental affairs paid by top management
CEB
Defensive behavior ylyq Abiding by the papermaking raw material structure
wcgh Accomplishing the target for the 12th Five Year Plan of papermaking industry
Accommodative behavior qjscsh Implementing cleaner production auditing,
hbbmyz Setting up a special environmental protection department
rh The integration of environmental affairs departments and other functional departments
jkxt Establishing and implementing environmental performance monitoring system
Proactive behavior hbjsyf Implementing environmental protection technology R&D
hjswpx Implementing environmental affairs training
hbtz Implementing environmental protection investment
glccy the management actively participating in the corporate environmental affairs

SP

GP EP

CEB IP

Fig. 1. Conceptual model.

 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211 1201

real condition in papermaking industry in China. The environ- 2 3 2 3

mental behavior adopted by the companies surveyed, green con- Accommodative behavior Accommodative behavior
sumers, competitors, suppliers, shareholders, surrounding 6 EP 7 6 EP 7
6 7 ¼ b6 7
residents, environmental NGOs, employees, and managers within 4 SP 5 4 SP 5
the surveyed companies are all affected by government environ- IP IP
mental regulation (Chen, 2009). In addition to the direct driving þ G½GP þ z
effect on CEB, SP is assumed to have an indirect driving effect
(2-2)
through EP and IP for the following reasons. Firstly, though SP has
played a constraining role on GP, its role strength is far less than the 2 3 2 3
regulating role of GP on SP (Lin, 2011), therefore it is more appro- Proactive behavior Proactive behavior
6 EP 7 6 EP 7
priate to assume that GP has significant indirect positive effects on 6 7 ¼ b6 7 þ G½GP
CEB through SP instead of the reverse case. Secondly, the general 4 SP 5 4 SP 5
public usually urges companies to adopt environmental behavior IP IP
through exerting pressure on economic stakeholders (such as en- þz
terprise competitors, suppliers, consumers), internal managers and
(2-3)
employees (Lin, 2011; Doonan et al., 2005). Furthermore, we as-
sume IP to play an intermediary role on external pressures because In the linear SEM, endogenous and exogenous latent variables
the target of our questionnaire survey about the relative impor- cannot be directly observed, but can be represented by a series of
tance of EIP on CEB are employees and managers within the sur- observed variables which can be combined through principal
veyed companies. Obviously, we assume all external pressures (GP, component analysis (Stevens, 1992). For example, the integration of
EP and SP) have significant indirect positive effects on CEB through environmental protection departments and other functional de-
IP because the basic precondition of our survey is that CEB is the partments in accommodative behavior cannot be directly observed.
decision made by managers and employees within the companies However, it can be represented by a series of observed variables
when they perceive or face the external pressures. This is in (e.g., contact frequency of the environmental protection de-
accordance with Doonan et al. (2005). Under the premise of effi- partments and other functions departments). Specifically, by
ciency, the sources of pressure from these different stakeholders applying principal component analysis to first-hand observed var-
may urge enterprises to take environmental behavior to improve iables of the investigation, this paper combined these observed
environmental performance. According to the previous discussion, variables to represent latent variables.
CEB is divided into three categories: defensive behavior, accom-
modative behavior and proactive behavior. (2) The measurement equation
Regarding the detailed mechanism of EIP affecting CEB, on the
one hand, GP, SP, EP and IP have direct driving effects on environ- x ¼ Lx x þ d (3)
mental behavior of papermaking enterprises; on the other hand, GP
also has an indirect driving effect on that through SP, EP and IP, SP
y ¼ Ly h þ ε (4)
has an indirect driving effect through EP and IP, and EP has played
an indirect driving role through IP. In this process, IP plays an Therein assuming ε has no correlation with h, x has no correla-
intermediary role on other external pressures. tion with d, d has no correlation with x, h and ε.
The conceptual model can be expressed as the SEM with the
general forms: x : q  1 vector, the indicator variable of the exogenous latent
variable x, namely, the indicator variable of GP;
(1) The structural equation Lx : q  r matrix, the regression coefficient of indicator variable
x with regard to the exogenous latent variable x, namely, the
factor loading of the indicator variable x;
h ¼ bh þ Gx þ z (1) d : q  1 vector, the measurement error of x;
y : p  1 vector, trix, the regression coefficient of indicator var-
Therein, h: m  1 vector, endogenous latent variable; iable y with regard to the endogenous latent variable h, namely,
the factor loading of the indicator variable y;
b : m  m matrix, the estimated coefficient of the endogenous ε : p  1 vector, the measurement error of y.
latent variable h;
G : m  n matrix, the estimated coefficient of the exogenous In this paper, the Amos 21.0 software is used to estimate the
latent variable x; measurement model and structural model. Based on the above
x: n  1 matrix, the exogenous latent variable; conceptual model and SEM, the following hypotheses are put
z : m  1 vector, residual error. forward:

Specifically, this model can also expressed as: H1. GP has significant direct positive effects on CEB
H1x1. GP has significant indirect positive effects on CEB through
2 3 2 3 SP.
Defensive behavior Defensive behavior
6 7 6 7 H1x2. GP has significant indirect positive effects on CEB through
6 EP 7 ¼ b6 EP 7 þ G½GP
4 SP 5 4 SP 5 EP.
IP IP H1x3. GP has significant indirect positive effects on CEB through
þz IP.
(2-1) H2. SP has significant direct positive effects on CEB
H2x1. SP has significant indirect positive effects on CEB through
1202 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
Defensive
behavior
0.35
Accommodative
0.27
behavior
0.25
Proactive
behavior
Fig. 2. CFA of CEB. Note: CMIN/DF ¼ 2.065, RMSEA ¼ 0.115, RMR ¼ 0.047, GFI ¼ 0.916, CFI ¼ 0.856, NFI ¼ 0.812.
EP.
H2x2. SP has significant indirect positive effects on CEB through
IP.
H3. EP has significant direct positive effects on CEB
H3x1. EP has significant indirect positive effects on CEB through
IP.
H4. IP has significant direct positive effects on CEB.
3. Empirical results
Using AMOS 21.0, we first employed structural equation
modeling (SEM) to conduct confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
based on survey data to determine the theoretical structure of the
factors in the questionnaire. We then employed SEM to carry out
path analysis on the driving mechanism of the key factors on the
CEB (defensive behavior, accommodative behavior, and proactive
behavior) for papermaking enterprises.
3.1. CFA results
CFA was used to test the relationships between a group of
measurement indicators and a group of facets that could explain
the measurement indicators. CFA allows researchers to analyze and
confirm the validity of the assumed relationships between mea-
surement indicators and facets. The fitting results for the CEB
measurement model were satisfactory, where the factor loadings
for the 10 measurement indicators were relatively high ranging
from 0.52 to 0.99 (Fig. 2).
Next, we explored the EIP measurement model shown in Fig. 3,
where according to the first order CFA, the factor loadings for the 20
measurement indicators ranged from 0.22 to 0.97. In particular, the
0.65 Abiding by raw material structure
0.57 Accomplishing the target
0.52 Cleaner production auditing,
0.85 Establishing an environmental department
0.89 Integration
0.87 Establishing a monitoring system
0.93 Environmental technology R & D
0.97 Environmental affairs training
0.99 Environmental protection investment
0.96 Management participation
factor loadings for the attention paid to CEB by customers, the green
consumption tendency of consumers, and the exploitation of new
products to meet the green demand of consumers were only 0.26,
0.22, and 0.32, respectively, and thus these three measurement
indicators were deleted,3 so the modified measurement model
included 17 measurement indicators. The modified model was
analyzed again by first order CFA and the results are shown in Fig. 4.
According to the first order CFA, the factor loadings of the 17
observed indicators ranged from 0.51 to 0.96 and they were sig-
nificant at the 5% level. As shown in Fig. 4, each model fitting index
was satisfactory for the EIP measurement model, which showed
that the assumed path analysis diagram (i.e., the conceptual model)
matched with the collected data.
3.2. Path analysis results
We employed SEM for path analysis of the driving mechanisms
of the key factors on CEB (defensive behavior, accommodative
behavior, and proactive behavior) for papermaking enterprises.
Based on the initially constructed SEM for CEB, we revised the
initial model according to the fitting and evaluation of the initial
model, which improved the fitting of the model so it passed the test
to obtain the final form of the SEM, as shown in Figs. 5e7. The
structural equation model fitting statistics after the final modifi-
cation for the mechanism of the key factors on the environmental
behaviors (defensive, accommodative and proactive) of enterprises
are shown in Tables 7e9. The standardized path coefficients and p-
values for the EIP based on CEB (defensive, accommodative and
proactive) are shown in Table 10.
3
The value of l was between 0.50 and 0.95, which indicates that the basic fitting
index was satisfactory, so a l value greater than 0.50 could be used as a criterion to
determine the retention or deletion of measurement indicators.
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211 1203

0.59 Industry environmental access

0.55 Comprehensive renovation

GP

0.97 Merger and reorganization

-0.06 0.81 Prevention and control of three wastes

0.76 Levy sewage charges

0.10

0.71Environmental complaints by community

0.78 Environmental petition by community

SP

0.62 Environmental petition by NGOs

0.54 Environmental complaints by NGOs

0.18
0.02
0.26 Attention on CEB paid by customers

0.22 Consumers green consumption tendency

0.32 New products meeting green demand

EP
0.63 The role of improving image
-0.08
0.52 The role of increasing profits

0.55 The impact of stockholders on CEB

0.63

0.70 Education level of the employees

0.74 Employees environmental awareness

IP
0.51 Management environmental awareness

0.64 Management communication frequency

0.74 Management attention on environment

Fig. 3. Initial CFA analysis of EIP. Note: CMIN/DF ¼ 2.496, RMSEA ¼ 0.137, RMR ¼ 0.044, GFI ¼ 0.877, CFI ¼ 0.816, NFI ¼ 0.784.

We analyzed the final path for the mechanisms related to the
key factors responsible for corporate environmental defensive
behavior, as shown in Fig. 5, which indicated that government
pressure, economic pressure, and internal pressure had significant
positive effects on corporate environmental defensive behavior,
where the path coefficient for government pressure was 0.19
(p < 0.01), the path coefficient for economic pressure was 0.88
(p < 0.001), and the path coefficient for internal pressure was 0.38
(p < 0.1). Thus, in the direct path, economic pressure was the most
significant and important factor, followed by internal pressure, and
then government pressure, and the direct path for social pressure
was deleted in the modified model (because the p-value was high
and not significant). In the indirect path, government pressure had
indirect effects on corporate environmental defensive behavior
through economic pressure and internal pressure, social pressure
through economic pressure and internal pressure, and economic
pressure through internal pressure.
As shown in Fig. 6, government pressure, economic pressure,
and internal pressure had significant positive effects on corporate
accommodative environmental behavior, where the path coeffi-
cient for government pressure was 0.31 (p < 0.001), the path co-
efficient for economic pressure was 0.68 (p < 0.001), and the path
1204 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
0.59 Industry environmental access
0.58 Comprehensive renovation stipulation
GP
-0.06
-0.03
SP
0.19 0.14
EP
-0.07
0.67
IP
Fig. 4. Revised CFA analysis of EIP. Note: CMIN/DF ¼ 1.987, RMSEA ¼ 0.111, RMR ¼ 0.039, GFI ¼ 0.864, CFI ¼ 0.864, NFI ¼ 0.731.
coefficient for internal pressure was 0.30 (p < 0.1). Thus, in the
direct path, economic pressure was the most significant and
important factor, followed by government pressure, and then in-
ternal pressure, while the direct path of social pressure was also
deleted in the modified model (because the p-value was high and
not significant). In the indirect path, government pressure had an
indirect effect on corporate environmental accommodative
behavior through social pressure and internal pressure, social
pressure through economic pressure and internal pressure, and
economic pressure through internal pressure.
As shown in Fig. 7, government pressure, economic pressure,
and internal pressure had significant positive effects on corporate
proactive environmental behavior, where the path coefficient for
government pressure was 0.23 (p < 0.001), the path coefficient for
economic pressure was 2.3 (p < 0.01), and the path coefficient for
internal pressure was 1.96 (p < 0.01). Thus, in the direct path,
economic pressure was the most important factor, followed by
internal pressure, and then government pressure, where
0.96 Merger and reorganization
0.82 Prevention and control of three wastes
0.76 Levy sewage charges
0.72 Environmental complaints by community
0.79 Environmental petition by community
0.60 Environmental petition by NGO
0.54 Environmental complaints by NGO
0.55 The role of improving image
0.55 The role of increasing profits
0.53 The impact of stockholders on CEB
0.78 Education level of the employees
0.82 Employees environmental awareness
0.51 Management environmental awareness
0.58 Management communication frequency
0.67 Management attention on environment
government pressure was the most significant factor (path
coefficient ¼ 0.23, p < 0.001) although its strength was obviously
weaker than that of economic pressure and internal pressure.
However, the direct path of social pressure was also deleted in the
modified model (because the p-value was high and not significant).
In the indirect path, government pressure had an indirect effect on
corporate environmental proactive behavior through social pres-
sure and internal pressure, social pressure through internal pres-
sure, and economic pressure through internal pressure.
The positive coefficients showed the positive contributions of
these factors to the CEB and they were statistically significant,
whereas the negative coefficients indicated their negative contri-
butions and they were also statistically significant. In addition, the
path coefficient comparison showed that economic pressure had
the most important effects on CEB (i.e., defensive, accommodative,
and proactive) and the path coefficients ¼ (i.e., 0.88, 0.68, and 2.3
respectively), where the direct path coefficients were least signifi-
cant at the level of p < 0.01. (see Table 10).
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211 1205

SP
0.12

GP 0.04 EP

0.19 0.88 0.65

-0.12

0.18

Defensive IP
behavior 0.38

Fig. 5. The final path for the mechanism of key internal and external environmental factors on environmental defensive behavior of enterprises.

SP
0.09 -0.02

GP EP

0.31 0.68 0.70

-0.03

0.23
Accommodative IP
behavior 0.30

Fig. 6. The final path for the mechanism of key internal and external environmental factors on environmental accommodative behavior of enterprises.

4. Discussion
According to the final path analysis results for the mechanisms
related to the key factors based on CEB, in this section, we discuss
the verification results for the 10 hypotheses in order to propose
possible countermeasures for CEB implementation.
(1) Government pressure
As shown in Figs. 5e7, government pressure had significant
direct effects on the environmental behavior of papermaking en-
terprises in China (path coefficients ¼ 0.19, 0.31, and 0.23, respec-
tively). In particular, government pressure had the minimum
positive effect on environmental behavior (defensive and proac-
tive) compared with the other sources of pressure and its strength
was obviously weaker than that of economic pressure and internal
pressure. In addition, government pressure had moderate positive
effects on environmental accommodative behavior and its strength
was obviously weaker than that of economic pressure but slightly
higher than that of internal pressure. This conclusion differs from
that obtained in some previous studies, which suggested that
government regulations had the most important effects on CEB
(Liu, 2009; Zhang et al., 2008). However, our results agree with
Zhang et al. (2012) who showed that regulatory policies had no
significant effects on energy-saving and CO2 reduction practices,
except for the CO2 reduction strategy in Chinese iron and steel
enterprises.
Overall, the driving effect due to government pressure on the
CEB of papermaking enterprises was lower than we expected. This
conclusion agrees with the results obtained from the first round of
interviews, which showed that the vast majority of the enterprises
surveyed considered that the effect of government environmental
regulations on the environmental behavior of Chinese paper-
making enterprises was limited. This finding may also be associated
closely with certain country-specific characteristics of the Chinese
papermaking industry, as follows. (1) The lack of independence of
environmental regulatory agencies for the papermaking industry
led directly to lower regulatory effects. In particular, the main body
1206 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211

SP
0.27

GP EP

0.23 2.30 0.90

0.02

0.09
Proactive IP
behavior 1.96

Fig. 7. The final path for the mechanism of key internal and external environmental factors on environmental proactive behavior of enterprises.

Table 7 Table 10
The mechanism of the key factors on the environmental defensive behavior of en- The standardized path coefficients and P values of EIP on CEB (defensive, accom-
terprises: the structural equation model fitting statistics after the second modative and proactive).
modification.
Path Standardized path coefficient P value
Model fitting statistics Statistical value Model fitting statistics Statistical value Defensive CEB ) GP 0.194 **
c2 =df 1.990 CFI 0.907 Defensive CEB ) EP 0.882 ***
RMSEA 0.079 RMR 0.072 Defensive CEB ) IP 0.377 *
GFI 0.915 NFI 0.870 Accommodative CEBhas no 0.310 ***
correlation with ) GP
Accommodative CEB ) EP 0.676 ***
Accommodative CEB ) IP 0.299 *
Proactive CEB ) GP 0.226 ***
Table 8 Proactive CEB ) EP 2.302 **
The mechanism of the key factors on the environmental accommodative behavior of Proactive CEB ) IP 1.956 **
enterprises: the structural equation model fitting statistics after the second
modification. Note: ***P < 0.001, **P < 0.01, *P < 0.1.

Model fitting statistics Statistical value Model fitting statistics Statistical value

c2 =df 1.943 CFI 0.874

RMSEA 0.079 RMR 0.056 introduced environmental laws and regulations with low regula-
GFI 0.902 NFI 0.847 tory effects when the affiliated department of laws and regulations
decided to adopted these proposals (Sun, 2013). (2) The standard of
environmental regulation is low for the Chinese papermaking in-
dustry. Compared with developed countries in Europe and the
Table 9 United States, the environmental standards are relatively low, and
The mechanism of the key factors on the environmental proactive behavior of en- thus some enterprises would rather discharge pollution instead of
terprises: the structural equation model fitting statistics after the third modification.
processing it in order to maximize profits (Sun, 2013). (3) The su-
Model fitting Statistical Model fitting Statistical pervision of environmental regulations is not strong for the
statistics value statistics value papermaking industry. In particular, although a water pollution
c2 =df 2.576 CFI 0.904 prevention law and related emissions standards have already been
RMSEA 0.078 RMR 0.058 introduced, large amounts of pollutants have been illegally dis-
GFI 0.882 NFI 0.866 charged and waste water discharge noncompliance has occurred,
which shows that the supervision by Chinese environmental
regulation departments is very weak, thereby reducing the effec-
tiveness of environmental regulations aimed at papermaking in-
for environmental regulation is the Ministry of Environmental dustry.4 (4) Command and control measures have been dominant
Protection of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and it imple- in the environmental regulations for China's papermaking industry,
mented a regulatory system that combines uniform and graded whereas the application of market-based regulatory instruments is
regulations. The affiliated department of laws and regulations was inadequate (Cui, 2010). Initially, command and control measures
responsible for drafting the environmental regulations and policies, are effective, but they still have some disadvantages. In particular,
but it is necessary to refer to the local government when formu-
lating environmental regulations for papermaking industry. Given
that papermaking enterprises have made major contributions to 4
Cngold.org. The supervision of environmental regulations for the papermaking
the local economy, the local government inevitably formulated industry will be strengthened and the listed companies will benefit by survival of
legislative proposals with lower punishments for them, so they the fittest. http://stock.cngold.org/c/2017-07-03/c5126065.html.
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
they lack flexibility because these measures require that all
papermaking enterprises must reach a unified standard, but
adopting unified regulatory standards severely undermines regu-
latory efforts as most Chinese papermaking enterprises are small
and scattered with differences in scale. In addition, the command
and control regulations are based on end-of-pipe technology,
which can limit the free choice of enterprises and reduce efficiency.
(2) Social pressure
As shown in Figs. 5e7, the direct path for the effect of social
pressure on the environmental behavior of papermaking enter-
prises was deleted, which shows that the direct effect of social
pressure on CEB was not significant. In addition, social pressure had
indirect effects on corporate environmental defensive behavior
through economic pressure and internal pressure, where the path
coefficient for the direct impact of social pressure on internal
pressure was 0.12. Social pressure had indirect effects on corpo-
rate environmental accommodative behavior through economic
pressure and internal pressure, where the path coefficients for
economic pressure and internal pressure were 0.02 and 0.03,
respectively. Social pressure had indirect effects on corporate
environmental proactive behavior through internal pressure,
where the path coefficient for internal pressure was only 0.02. The
relatively weak negative effects of social pressure on economic
pressure and internal pressure indicate that in China, social pres-
sure currently has no driving effect on CEB via positive effects on
other sources of pressure as shown by the analysis of the concep-
tual model.
Social pressure had no significant direct effects on the CEB of
papermaking enterprises. In addition, the strength of the indirect
effect of social pressure was also very weak, and even negative. This
conclusion agreed with the results of the first round of interviews,
which showed that the vast majority of enterprises surveyed
considered that the frequency of the community and environ-
mental organizations making environmental complaints or
completing environmental petitions was rather low, so social
pressure has a limited effect on the environmental behavior of
papermaking enterprises at present. This finding may also be
associated closely with certain country-specific characteristics of
the Chinese papermaking industry, as follows. First, according to
the statistics reported in the 2015 Annual Report of China's Paper
Industry, in terms of the ownership types of Chinese papermaking
companies, state-owned companies only account for 2.26%,
whereas collective and private companies account for 86.96%.5
Similarly, among the companies included in our survey, state-
owned companies account for 2.14% (15/702) and collective and
private companies accounted for 87.18% (612/702), indicating that
our survey can well represent the papermaking companies in the
real world. In this sense, the relative small effects of SP appears to
be a reasonable conclusion because the companies that respond
actively to social pressures are mainly state-owned companies (Wu
and Liu, 2008; Li, 2015). Second, the participation of China's general
public and NGOs in environmental affairs is still in its infancy, so it
is difficult for social pressure to have a major effect in promoting
CEB. In particular, their participation is dominated by “end partic-
ipation” but very weak in terms of “preliminary participation”
(Wang, 2008). Third, the law only prescribes principles based on
public participation and there are no specific provisions regarding
the process and specific rights, including the right to know the
environment and the right to participate in environmental
decision-making, so in terms of environmental legislation, the
5
2015 Annual Report of China's Paper Industry.
1207
enthusiasm for public participation is severely reduced (Ma, 2007).
Fourth, the rights and interests of Chinese citizens to participate in
environmental legislation are limited to the right to prosecution,
the right to complain, and the right to pollution damage relief.6 In
principle, the higher authorities should refer to a lower department
when introducing specific environmental laws, but there are many
uncertainties regarding whether the views of the public can be
adopted. Thus, the current law does not make a unified provision
regarding the channels that allow the public to participate in
environmental affairs.
(3) Economic pressure
As shown in Figs. 5e7, compared with the other sources of
pressure, economic pressure had the greatest and most significant
direct effects on the environmental behavior (i.e., defensive,
accommodative, and proactive) of papermaking enterprises (i.e.,
path coefficients ¼ 0.88, 0.68, and 2.30, respectively), and thus
economic pressure was the most important factor. This is not sur-
prising because the first round of interviews showed that social and
government pressures were limited due to certain country-specific
reasons. In particular, it can be concluded that proactive companies
would respond significantly more strongly to economic pressure
than defensive and accommodative companies. As mentioned
earlier, proactive environmental behavior refers to environmental
technology R&D, environmental affairs training, environmental
investment, and management participation in environmental af-
fairs, so achieving sustainable profits and promoting a long-term
green corporate image (economic pressure) would obviously have
the greatest effects on proactive environmental behaviors because
implementing these higher level environmental behaviors requires
much greater environmental inputs. By contrast, economic pres-
sure has a weaker driving effect on other environmental behaviors
(defensive and accommodative). According to the previous anal-
ysis, papermaking enterprises encounter different sources of
pressure due to green consumer demand, suppliers, competitors
and shareholders, and these stakeholders at the economic level
play different roles in the promotion of CEB. For example, due to the
pressure of green consumer demand, papermaking enterprises
attach importance to environmental technology R&D, where R&D
into new green paper products can meet the growing green con-
sumer demand. In the context of competitors implementing a se-
ries of environmental behaviors, papermaking enterprises must
consider green technology innovation, internal training, and
actively setting up a special environmental protection fund. In
addition, managers should consider and participate in corporate
environmental affairs, emphasize the establishment of good re-
lationships with relevant government departments, and aim to
establish a new green image in the market. Moreover, due to the
pressure from suppliers, companies should form a green supply
chain in the papermaking industry. Thus, due to pressure from their
shareholders, companies must improve the disclosure of environ-
mental information and conduct environmental performance as-
sessments to gain support from their shareholders.
According to the key factors identified in this study, the atten-
tion to CEB by customers (lsxq1), green consumption tendency of
consumers (lsxq2), exploiting new products to meet the green
demand of consumers (lsxq3), improving the company image
(jzz1), increasing profits (jzz2), and the impact of stockholders
(gd1) mainly affected the CEB of papermaking enterprises.
6
Yao T. An analysis on integrity of public participation in the cardinal law for
environmental protection in China-build on other countries' experiences.
2007.http://article.chinalawinfo.com/ArticleFullText.aspx?ArticleId¼57378.
1208 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
According to the CFA results and Fig. 3, the factor loadings for lsxq1,
lsxq2, and lsxq3 were only 0.26, 0.22, and 0.32, respectively, so
these measurement indicators were deleted. Therefore, we actually
concluded that jzz1, jzz2, and gd1 were the most important factors
that affected the CEB of papermaking enterprises. Furthermore, at
present, Chinese papermaking enterprises assume that improving
their green enterprise image, maximizing long-term profits, and
dealing with the green pressure from shareholders are the most
important forces that drive enterprises to actively implement
environmental behaviors. This is supported by some research,
which suggests that in the long term, there will be a shift from
passively abiding by environmental rules toward an active envi-
ronmental strategy due to pressure from the government, the
economic level, and the internal level of firms, but more impor-
tantly, implementing active environmental behavior will help firms
to obtain more profit, create a greener image, and become more
efficient and competitive (Berry and Rondinelli, 1998), and this
positive correlation was confirmed by empirical research
(Mcwilliams et al., 2006; Agan et al., 2016).
(4) Internal pressure
As shown in Figs. 5e7, internal pressure had significant positive
effects on the CEB (i.e., defensive, accommodative, and proactive) of
papermaking enterprises (i.e., path coefficients ¼ 0.38, 0.30 and
1.96, respectively), where internal pressure had stronger effects on
environmental behavior (defensive and proactive) and it was sec-
ond only to economic pressure but obviously stronger than gov-
ernment pressure. Internal pressure had weaker positive effects on
environmental accommodative behavior, where it was obviously
weaker than economic pressure and slightly weaker than govern-
ment pressure. Similar to economic pressure, proactive companies
would respond more obviously to internal pressure than defensive
and accommodative companies, possibly because committed
managers as well as the educational level and environmental
awareness of employees (they are measurement indicators for IP in
this paper) would have significantly greater effects on the proactive
environmental behavior of labor-intensive and highly polluting
industries such as the papermaking industry (Wang and Cheng,
2015). By contrast, internal pressure had weaker effects on other
environmental behaviors (defensive and accommodative).
According to previous studies, internal factors comprise the
internal stakeholders and characteristics of the enterprise,
including the managers, employees, corporate culture, enterprise
size, and financial status. However, according to the path analysis,
internal pressure only included the educational level of the em-
ployees (yg1), environmental awareness of the employees (yg2),
environmental awareness of the top management (glc1), commu-
nication frequency between the top management and govern-
mental environmental protection department (glc2), and the
attention paid to environmental affairs by top management (glc3);
thus, internal pressure only considered internal stakeholders and
not the enterprise characteristics due to the limitations of the
sample and the lack of operational measurement indicators for
them.
According to the path analysis results, the driving effects of
employees and managers on the CEB (defensive and proactive)
were much stronger than government pressure, and second only to
economic pressure, which indicates that due to the driving effect of
internal employees and managers, a significant transformation of
CEB may occur, where it has been transforming from the green
practices forced by the external pressures into an environmental
strategy driven by internal pressure and been deeply rooted in the
corporate culture (Vidaver-Cohen and Simcic Bronn, 2008). In the
framework of the new institutionalism, the driving forces due to
internal management, employees, shareholders, and other stake-
holders interact and they are interdependent. In particular, the
interactions between these related institutional forces determine
the extent to which enterprises adopt environmental behavior. In
fact, these institutional forces cause homogenization of the insti-
tutional environment and they will eventually lead to more stan-
dardized and rational practices in an industry or organisation. In
this sense, CEB can be regarded as a process of social construction
where enterprises obtain organizational legitimacy driven by
management, employees, and other stakeholders (Babiak and
Trendafilova, 2011).
5. Conclusions and suggestions
In this study, we examined the effects of EIP on the CEB of
papermaking firms in China. Questionnaires were sent to 1015
firms, where 721 firms responded and 702 questionnaires were
usable. SEM was used to examine the impacts of different pres-
sures. The results showed that government pressure, economic
pressure, and internal pressure had significant positive effects on
driving the CEB of papermaking firms in China.
Furthermore, economic pressure was the most important factor,
as supported by previous studies, which suggests that companies
are sensitive to market factors (Liu et al., 2010), and economic
benefit is the most important force that drives enterprises to
implement positive environmental behavior, where pressure from
customers and shareholders are the two most important de-
terminants of the formulation of an environmental plan (Henriques
and Sadorsky, 1995, 1996). It is only possible for enterprises to
achieve the transition from passively following environmental
rules to the active implementation of CEB when the effectiveness of
resource utilization and environmental governance can be tested in
the market, and proven to be profitable in the long term, which can
help to shape the long-term green image of enterprises and build a
sustainable competitive advantage (Berry and Rondinelli, 1998;
Zhang et al., 2009).
Governmental pressure had a significant direct effect but the
strength of this effect was much less than we expected. This
conclusion does not agree with many previous studies, which
suggested that governmental regulation is the most important
factor that drives CEB (Ytterhus and Synnestvedt, 1995; Zhang et al.,
2008). After investigating pulp and paper enterprises in Canada,
Doonan et al. (2005) confirmed the key role that governmental
intervention plays in driving the CEB, but the fact that the pulp and
paper industry is a highly regulated industry in Canada could
mainly explain why governmental pressure was the most impor-
tant driving force. However, this conclusion was supported by
Henriques and Sadorsky (1995, 1996). Zhang and Wang (2014)
found that environmental regulations had no direct effects on
collaborations to achieve carbon emission reductions (CER) and
they suggested that the current environmental regulation system in
China is not effective in exerting pressure on industrial firms to
adopt CER practices.
Internal pressure had a significant positive effect, where the
high positive effect of internal pressure on the CEB (defensive and
proactive) was second only to economic pressure, and it was much
stronger than that of governmental pressure. In many cases
(especially to promote corporate environmental defensive behavior
and environmental proactive behavior), the driving force due to
management and employees is even more important than that due
to external stakeholders, as shown in some previous studies
(Tatoglu et al., 2015; O’hEocha, 2000).
The direct path of social pressure was deleted, which showed
that the direct effect of social pressure was not significant. In
addition, the strength of the indirect effect of social pressure was
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
also very weak, and even slightly negative in some cases. This
agrees with the findings of Liu et al. (2010) and Cai et al. (2002),
who showed that the effect of the general public on driving the
environmental behaviors of Chinese enterprises was not signifi-
cant, possibly because the general public have comparatively high
costs in terms of environmental supervision, while the lack of
government credibility and the limited benefits of environmental
supervision hinder public participation (Wang and Ding, 2006).
Therefore, policy makers should focus on the comprehensive
use of economic mechanisms, government regulation, and internal
incentive mechanisms to encourage enterprises to actively imple-
ment environmental behaviors. Given that the direct effect of social
pressure was not significant, the following policy changes are rec-
ommended. First, policy makers should help the public to partici-
pate actively in environmental issues. More alternative pipelines
should be created to facilitate easier access for social actors to the
environmental information of firms' (Liu et al., 2010), and there
needs to be a fundamental change from being informed after events
to prior consultation and participation. Second, more laws and
regulations should be issued to promote public participation. In
addition, the government should implement incentives to
encourage the public to participate in environmental protection.
For example, central and local governments should set up special
environmental funds to reward environmental participants. At
present, given that the driving effect of government regulation is
lower than expected, policy makers should accelerate the applica-
tion and innovation of market-based instruments aimed at the
papermaking industry. Second, the Ministry of Environmental
Protection of the PRC should establish a unified regulatory system,
where the affiliated department of regulations and policies should
maintain independence regarding the formulation of environ-
mental regulations in order to avoid impacts from local govern-
ment. Third, complete environmental legislation as well as related
laws and regulations for the Chinese papermaking industry should
be established, and relevant environmental regulation standards
should be enhanced to encourage enterprises to implement
pollution abatement measures. Fourth, measures should be taken
to strengthen environmental regulations and supervision of the
papermaking industry.
Finally, some limitations of this study should be noted. First, we
only considered management and employees but not the enter-
prise characteristics when examining the effects of internal pres-
sure. Second, we conducted in-depth interviews to refine the
factors that influenced the CEB, but the respondents came mainly
from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian, and thus these geographical
limitations may have led to some omissions and subjective bias.
Third, we considered relevant questionnaires employed in many
previous studies and conducted internet searches to design the
formal questionnaire, but there may have been some limitation in
terms of the design of the factors, facets, and items in our ques-
tionnaire because few relevant mature questionnaires were avail-
able. In addition, the empirical results showed that the direct effect
of social pressure was not significant and this disagreement with
the research hypothesis indicates that due to the lack of adequate
operational measurement indicators in mature questionnaire, this
choice of measurement indicators might have been unscientific or
lacking in rationality.
In future research, we suggest that the number of samples could
be increased and suitable measurement indicators for enterprise
characteristics should be designed for the questionnaire. In addi-
tion to in-depth interviews, future studies could employ new
methods such as behavioral or computational experiments to refine
the key factors. The geographical selection of interviewees should
also be more extensive. In addition, future studies could increase
the measurement indicators for social pressure to obtain more
1209
scientific, reasonable, and comprehensive measurement indicators
in order to measure social pressure more accurately.
Acknowledgments
This study was financially supported by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (grant no. 71573253) and the Program
of Innovation Team of China University of Mining and Technology
(grant no. 2015ZY003).
References
Agan, Y., Kuzey, C., Acar, M.F., Açıkgoz, A., 2016. The relationship between corporate
social responsibility, environmental supplier development, and firm perfor-
mance. J. Clean. Prod. 112, 1872e1881.
Anderson, J.C., Gerbing, D.W., 1988. Structural equation modeling in practice: a
review and recommend two-step approach. Psychol. Bull. 103, 411e423.
Andersson, L., Bateman, T., 2000. Individual environmental initiative: championing
natural environmental issues in US business organizations. Acad. Manag. J. 43
(4), 548e570.


Angel
ndez, E., Junquera, B., V

del Brío, J., Ferna azquez, C.J., 2001. Environmental
managers and departments as driving forces of TQEM in Spanish industrial
companies. Int. J. Qual. Reliab. Manag. 18 (5), 495e511.
Azzone, G., Bianchi, R., Noci, G., 1997. Implementing environmental certification in
Italy: managerial and competitive implications for firms. Eco-Management
Auditing 4, 98e108.
Babiak, K., Trendafilova, S., 2011. CSR and environmental responsibility: motives and
pressures to adopt green management practices. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ.
Manag. 18, 11e24.
Bagozzi, R.P., 1984. A prospectus for theory construction in marketing. J. Mark. 48,
11e29.
Bagozzi, R.P., Yi, Y., 1988. On the evaluation of structural equation models. J. Acad.
Mark. Sci. 16, 74e94.
Bansal, P., Roth, K., 2000. Why companies go green: a model of ecological respon-
siveness. Acad. Manag. J. 43 (4), 717e736.
Barla, P., 2007. ISO 140001 certification and environmental performance in Quebec's
pulp and paper industry. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 53, 291e306.
Berry, M.A., Rondinelli, 1998. Proactive corporate environmental management: a
new industrial revolution. Acad. Manag. Exec. 12 (2), 38e50.
Blackman, A., Bannister, G.J., 1998. Community pressure and clean technology in the
informal sector: an econometric analysis of the adoption of propane by tradi-
tional Mexican brickmakers. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 35 (1), 1e21.
Braam, G.J.M., Weerd, L.U., Hauck, M., Huijbregts, M.A.J., 2016. Determinants of
corporate environmental reporting: the importance of environmental perfor-
mance and assurance. J. Clean. Prod. 129, 724e734.
Bray, D., Sanchez, J., Murphy, E., 2002. Social dimensions of organic coffee pro-
duction in Mexico: Lessons for eco-labeling initiatives. Soc. Nat. Resour. 15,
429e446.
Buysee, K., Verbeke, A., 2003. Proactive environmental strategies: a stakeholder
management perspective. Strat. Manag. J. 24 (5), 453e470.
Cai, Y.P., Xu, L.Y., Yang, Z.F., 2002. Public participation in the study of TVIES'S
environmental performance. J. Beijing Normal Univ. Nat. Sci. 38 (1), 138e142
([in Chinese]).
Carpentier, C., Suret, J.M., 2015. Stock market and deterrence effect: a mid-run
analysis of major environmental and non-environmental accidents. J. Environ.
Econ. Manag. 71, 1e18.
Chen, X.D., 2009. Resources and environmental regulation and the competitiveness
of China's paper industry. Econ. Manag. J. 31 (10), 23e29 [in Chinese].
Chen, Y.X., 2015. Research on the Influential Factors of Environmental Behavior of
Heavy Pollution Enterprises. Kunming University of Science and Technology ([in
Chinese]).
Chen, W., Soyez, D., Zuo, W.F., 2003. The greening of industry: a research approach
of industrial environmental geography. Geogr. Res. 22 (5), 601e608.
Chin, K.S., Pun, K.F., 1999. Factors influencing ISO 14000 implementation in printed
circuit board manufacturing industry in Hong Kong. J. Environ. Plan. Manag. 42
(1), 123e135.
Christmann, P., 2004. Multinational companies and the natural environment: de-
terminants of global environmental policy. Acad. Manag. J. 47 (5), 747e760.
Clark, M., 2005. Corporate environmental behavior research: informing environ-
mental policy. Struct. Change Econ. Dyn. 16, 422e431.
Cngold.org. The supervision of environmental regulation on papermaking industry
will strengthen and the listed companies will benefit from survival of the fittest.
http://stock.cngold.org/c/2017-07-03/c5126065.html.
Crane, A., 1995. Rhetoric and reality in the greening of organizational culture.
Greener Manag. Int. 12, 49e62.
Cronbach, L.J., 1951. Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psycho-
metrika 16 (3), 297e334.
Cui, P., 2010. The Research of Environmental Regulatory Policies of China's Paper
Industry. Dobei University of Finance & Economics.
Daily, B.F., Huang, S.C., 2001. Achieving sustainability through attention to human
resource factors in environmental management. Int. J. Oper. Prod. Manag. 21
1210 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
(12), 1539e1552.
Dasgupta, S., Laplante, B., Mamingi, N., 1998. Pollution and capital markets in
developing countries. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 42 (3), 310e335.
Dasgupta, S., Hong, J.H., Laplante, B., Mamingi, N., 2006. Disclosure of environ-
mental violations and stock market in the Republic of Korea. Ecol. Econ. 58,
759e777.
Dechant, K., Altman, B., 1994. Environmental leadership: from compliance to
competitive advantage. Acad. Manag. Exec. 8 (3), 7e27.
DiMaggio, P.J., Powell, W.W., 1983. The iron cage revisited: institutional isomor-
phism and collective rationality in organizational fields. Am. Sociol. Rev. 48 (2),
147e160.
Dong, S., Burritt, R., Qian, W., 2014. Salient stakeholders in corporate social re-
sponsibility reporting by Chinese mining and minerals companies. J. Clean.
Prod. 84, 59e69.
Doonan, J., Lanoie, P., Laplante, B., 2005. Determinants of environmental perfor-
mance in the Canadian pulp and paper industry: an assessment from inside the
industry. Ecol. Econ. 55, 73e84.
Earnhart, D., 2004. The effects of community characteristics on polluter compliance
levels. Land Econ. 80 (3), 408e432.
Earnhart, D., Lizal, L., 2002. Effects of ownership and financial status on corporate
environmental performance. In: William Davidson Working Paper, p. 492.
Fischer, K., Schot, J., 1993. Environmental Strategies for Industry. Island Press,
Washington DC.
Freeman, R.E., 1984. Strategic Management: a Stakeholder Approach. Pitman,
Boston.
Gattiker, T.F., Carter, C.R., 2010. Understanding project champions' ability to gain
intra-organizational commitment for environmental projects. J. Oper. Manag.
28 (1), 72e85.
Ghosh, S., Jintanapakanont, J., 2004. Identifying and assessing the critical risk fac-
tors in an underground rail project in Thailand: a factor analysis approach. Int. J.
Proj. Manag. 22 (8), 633e643.
Glicksman, R.L., Earnhart, D., 2008. Effectiveness of government interventions at
inducing better environmental performance: does effectiveness depend on
facility or firm feature. Boston Coll. Environ. Aff. Law Rev. 35 (1), 1e33.
Govindarajulu, N., Daily, B.F., 2004. Motivating employees for environmental
improvement. Ind. Manag. Data Syst. 104 (4), 364e372.
Gray, W.B., Deily, M.E., 1996. Compliance and enforcement: air pollution regulation
in the U.S. steel industry. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 31 (1), 96e111.
Guan, J.Q., Huang, X.J., Liu, X.L., Liu, H.M., Chen, W., 2005. Environmental behavior
and analysis of driving model for printing and dyeing enterprises in Taihu Basin.
J. Lake Sci. 4, 351e355 [in Chinese].
Gupta, S., Goldar, B., 2005. Do stock markets penalize environment-unfriendly
behaviour? Evidence from India. Ecol. Econ. 52, 81e95.
Hamilton, J.T., 1993. Politics and social costs: estimating the impact of collective
action on hazardous waste facilities. RAND J. Econ. 24 (1), 101e125.
Hao, Z.T., Yan, L., Xie, X.B., Duan, X.H., 2014. Identification and analysis on critical
influential factors of green behavior decision-making for enterprises in
resource-based industry cluster. China Popul. Resour. Environ. 24 (10), 170e176
[in Chinese].
He, Z.X., Xu, S.C., Shen, W.X., Long, R.Y., Chen, H., 2016. Factors that influence
corporate environmental behavior: empirical analysis based on panel data in
China. J. Clean. Prod. 133, 531e543.
Helland, E., 1998. The enforcement of pollution control laws: inspections, violations,
and self-reporting. Rev. Econ. Stat. 80 (1), 141e153.
Henriques, I., Sadorsky, P., 1995. The determinants of firms that formulate envi-
ronmental plans. Res. Corp. Soc. Perform. Policy 1, 67e97.
Henriques, I., Sadorsky, P., 1996. The determinants of an environmentally responsive
firm: an empirical approach. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 30 (3), 386e395.
Henriques, I., Sadorsky, P., 1999. The relationship between environmental
commitment and managerial perceptions of stakeholder importance. Acad.
Manag. J. 42, 89e99.
Howard-Grenville, Jennifer A., 2005. Explaining shades of green: why do companies
act differently on similar environmental issues? Law Soc. Inq. 30, 551e581.
Howard-Grenville, Jennifer A., 2006. Inside the black box: how organizational
culture and subcultures inform interpretations and actions on environmental
issues. Organ. Environ. 19 (1), 46e73.
Johnstone, N., Labonne, J., 2009. Why do manufacturing facilities introduce envi-
ronmental management systems? Improving and/or signaling performance.
Ecol. Econ. 68 (3), 719e730.
Joshi, P.L., Gao, S.S., 2009. Multinational corporations' corporate social and envi-
ronmental disclosures (CSED) on web sites. Int. J. Commer. Manag. 19 (1),
27e44.
Kaiser, H.F., 1974. An index of factorial Simplicity. Psychometrika 39, 31e36.
Khanna, M., 2002. Corporate environmental management: regulatory and market-
based incentives. Land Econ. 78 (4), 539e558.
Kimitaka, N., 2009. An empirical study of the initial adoption of ISO 14001 in Jap-
anese manufacturing firms. Ecol. Econ. 68 (3), 669e679.
Kitazawa, S., Sarkis, J., 2000. The relationship between ISO 14000 and continuous
source reduction. Int. J. Oper. Prod. Manag. 20 (2), 225e248.
Lan, Z.H., 2008. An economic analysis of enterprises environmental behavior. Ecol.
Econ. 5, 98e104 [in Chinese].
Lanoie, P., Laplante, B., Roy, M., 1998. Can capital markets create incentives for
pollution control? Ecol. Econ. 26, 31e41.
Laplante, B., Rilstone, P., 1996. Environmental inspections and emissions of the pulp
and paper industry in Quebec. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 31, 19e36.
Li, X.L., 2015. The Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility with Chinese Charac-
teristics. Doctoral Dissertation. JiLin University ([in Chinese]).
Li, R., Chen, Z., 2010. Critical success factors of information system: an empirical
study based on multiple linear regression. In: International Conference on
Internet Technology and Applications, pp. 1e4.
Li, H., Zhang, X.Y., 2016. Research on the relationship between management capa-
bility and corporate environmental responsibility-based on the perspective of
moderating effect of imitation pressure and forced pressure. East China Econ.
Manag. 30 (8), 139e146 [in Chinese].
Li, Q.J., Guo, D.P., Su, L.M., 2013. Paper industry pollution status and management
measures. North. Environ. 2, 97e98 [in Chinese].
Lin, Y.J., 2011. Study on Influencing Factors and its Function Mechanism of Reduc-
tion Behavior of Paper Mills-Taking Fujian Provice for an Example. Fujian
Agriculture and Forestry University (Doctoral Dissertation).
Liu, Y., 2009. Investigating external environmental pressure on firms and their
behavior in Yangtze River Delta of China. J. Clean. Prod. 17, 1480e1486.
Liu, X., Anbumozhi, V., 2009. Determinant factors of corporate environmental in-
formation disclosure: an empirical study of Chinese listed companies. J. Clean.
Prod. 17 (6), 593e600.
Liu, X., Liu, B., Shishime, T., Yu, Q., Bi, J., Fujitsuka, T., 2010. An empirical study on the
driving mechanism of proactive corporate environmental management in
China. J. Environ. Manag. 91 (8), 1707e1717.
Liu, A.D., Luo, W.B., Deng, M.J., 2013. Study on the relationship between driving
factors, behavior and performance of corporate environmental manage-
mentdempirical test on questionnaires of Chang-Zhu-Tan urban corporations.
East China Econ. Manag. 27 (4), 117e123 [in Chinese].
Lu, J.L., 2013. Investigating critical factors that influence shippers' and international
freight forwarders' preferences in carrier selection using integrated hierarchical
information integration approach. J. Mar. Sci. Technol. 21 (2), 182e190.
Lu, Y., Abeysekera, I., 2014. Stakeholders' power, corporate characteristics, and social
and environmental disclosure: evidence from China. J. Clean. Prod. 64 (1),
426e436.
Luethge, D., Han, H.G., 2012. Assessing corporate social and financial performance in
China. Soc. Responsib. J. 8 (3), 389e403.
Ma, C.H., 2007. Research on Public Participation in Environmental Administration
with Chinese Characteristics. China Ocean University ([in Chinese]).
Mcwilliams, A., Siegel, D.S., Wright, P.M., 2006. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Strateg. Implic.
43 (1), 1e18.
Moon, S.-G., Bae, S., 2011. State-level institutional pressure, firm's organizational
attributes, and corporate voluntary environmental behaviour. Soc. Nat. Resour.
24 (11), 1189e1204.
Murillo-Luna, J.L., Garces-Ayerbe, C., Rivera-Torres, P., 2008. Why do patterns of
environmental response Differ? A stakeholders' pressure approach. Strat.
Manag. J. 29 (11), 1225e1240.
Niu, K.Y., Wu, J., Yu, F., Guo, J.L., 2016. Construction and operation costs of waste-
water treatment and implications for the paper industry in China. Strategic
Management Journal 2008; 29 (11): 1225e1240 Environ. Sci. Technol. 50 (22),
12339e12347.
O'hEocha, M., 2000. A study of the influence of company culture, communications
and employee attitudes on the use of 5Ss for environmental management at
Cooke Brothers Ltd. TQM Mag. 12 (5), 321e330.
Pan, L., 2011. The Research on the Driving Mechanism of Environmental Behavior of
Chinese Enterprises. [D] Central China Normal University ([in Chinese]).
Pargal, S., Wheeler, D., 1996. Informal regulation of industrial pollution in devel-
oping countries: evidence from Indonesia. J. Polit. Econ. 104 (6), 1314e1327.
Pinsonneault, A., Kraemer, K.L., 1993. Survey research methodology in management
information systems: an assessment. J. Manag. Inf. Syst. 10 (2), 75e105.
Popp, D., Hafner, T., Johnstone, N., 2011. Environmental policy vs. public pressure:
innovation and diffusion of alternative bleaching technologies in the pulp in-
dustry. Res. Policy 40, 1253e1268.
Post, J.E., Altman, B.W., 1994. Managing the environmental change process: barriers
and opportunities. J. Organ. Change Manag. 7 (4), 64e81.
Prakash, A., 2000. Greening the Firm. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Prakash, A., Potoski, M., 2006. Racing to the bottom? Trade, environmental gover-
nance, and ISO14001. Am. J. Polit. Sci. 50 (2), 350e364.
Saether, B., 2000. Continuity and convergence: reduction of water pollution in the
Norwegian paper industry. Bus. Strategy Environ. 9, 390e400.
Scott, 2002. Organizational Theory: Rationality, Nature and Open System. Trans-
lated by Yang Huang, et al. Huaxia Press ([in Chinese]).
Sharma, S., 2000. Managerial interpretations and organizational context as pre-
dictors of corporate choice of environmental strategy. Acad. Manag. J. 43 (4),
681e697.
Silvo, K., Jouttijarvi, T., Melanen, M., 2009. Implications of regulation based on the
IPPC directive-A review on the Finnish pulp and paper industry. J. Clean. Prod.
17, 713e723.
Stafford, S., 2002. The effect of punishment on firm compliance with hazardous
waste regulations. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 44 (2), 290e308.
Stevens, J.P., 1992. Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences, second ed.
Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Stone, G., Joseph, M., Blodgett, J., 2004. Toward the creation of an eco-oriented
corporate culture: a proposed model of internal and external antecedents
leading to industrial firm eco-orientation. J. Bus. Ind. Mark. 19 (1), 68e84.
Sun, P.J., 2013. The Research on Environmental Regulation of Papermaking Industry
in China. Liaoning University.
Tatoglu, E., Bayraktar, E., Arda, O.A., 2015. Adoption of corporate environmental
 Z.-X. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 172 (2018) 1193e1211
policies in Turkey. J. Clean. Prod. 91, 313e326.
Vachon, S., Klassen, D.R., 2006. Green project partnership in the supply chain: the
case of the package printing industry. J. Clean. Prod. 14, 661e671.
Vidaver-Cohen, D., Simcic Bronn, P., 2008. Corporate citizenship and managerial
motivation: implications for business legitimacy. Bus. Soc. Rev. 113 (4),
441e475.
Wang, F., 2008. A game analysis on environmental behavior of governments, en-
terprises and the public. Econ. Probl. 6, 20e23 [in Chinese].
Wang, F., Cheng, Z.H., 2015. An empirical study of CEB and employee's environ-
mental behavior. J. Northwest Univ. Philos.y Soc. Sci. Ed. 45 (2), 135e139 ([in
Chinese]).
Wang, Y., Ding, D.W., 2006. Game analysis of public participation in environmental
protection. J. Dalian Marit. Univ. 32 (4), 19e22 ([in Chineses]).
Wang, L., Juslin, H., 2009. The impact of Chinese Culture on Corporate Social
Responsibility.
Wang, F., Wang, A.Q., 2012. New progress of research on corporate environmental
behavior. Econ. Inf. 1, 124e129 [in Chinese].
Wang, Z., Zhang, B., Yin, J., Zhang, Y., 2011. Determinants and policy implications for
household electricity-saving behavior: evidence from Beijing, China. Energy
Policy 39, 3550e3557.
Wang, Z., Guo, D., Wang, X., 2016. Determinants of residents' e-waste recycling
behavior intentions: evidence from China. J. Clean. Prod. 137, 850e860.
Welch, E.W., Mori, Y., Aoyagi-Usui, M., 2002. Voluntary adoption of ISO 14001 in
Japan: mechanisms, stages and effects. Bus. Strategy Environ. 11, 43e62.
Welford, R., 1995. Environmental Strategy and Sustainable Development: the
Corporate Challenge for the 21st Century. Routledge, London.
Wilson, C., Dowlatabadi, H., 2007. Models of decision making and residential energy
use [J]. Decis. Mak. Energy Use 32 (1), 169e203.
Wu, Z.Y., Liu, L., 2008. The hierarchical model and institution cooperation of Chinese
state-owned enterprise social responsibility. Econ. Manag. 30 (19e20), 25e32
[in Chinese].
Xie, Z.M., 2014. The effects of the government and media regulation on enterprise
environmental management behavior. Seeker 9, 70e74 [in Chinese].
Xiong, Y., 2007. Effect Analysis of Government Environmental Regulation and Public
Participation on Enterprises Pollution Behavior. Nanjing Agricultural University
1211
([in Chinese]).
Yao T. An analysis on integrity of public participation in the cardinal law for envi-
ronmental protection in China-build on other countries' experiences. http://
article.chinalawinfo.com/ArticleFullText.aspx?ArticleId¼57378.
Ytterhus, B., Synnestvedt, T., 1995. The Process of Greening: Results from the Nordic
Business Environmental Barometer. Working Paper 32. Norwegian School of
Management.
Zhang, B., Wang, Z., 2014. Inter-firm collaborations on carbon emission reduction
within industrial chains in China: practices, drivers and effects on firms' per-
formances. Energy Econ. 42, 115e131.
Zhang, B., Bi, J., Yuan, Z.W., Wang, S., Ge, J.J., 2007. Corporate environmental
behavior: a microcosmic perspective of environmental policy analysis. China
Popul. Resour. Environ. 17 (3), 40e44 [in Chinese].
Zhang, B., Bi, J., Yuan, Z.W., Ge, J.J., Liu, B.B., Bu, M.L., 2008. Why do firms engage in
environmental management? An empirical study in China. J. Clean. Prod. 16
(10), 1036e1045.
Zhang, D., Zhang, X.S., Chen, Y., 2009. The research of enterprise behavior analysis
model for participating the circular economy. Ecol. Econ. 6, 28e32 [in Chinese].
Zhang, B., Wang, Z.H., Yin, J.H., Su, L.X., 2012. CO2 emission reduction within Chinese
iron & steel industry: practices, determinants and performance. J. Clean. Prod.
33, 167e178.
Zhao, X.L., Zhao, Y., Yao, J., 2015. Environmental regulation policy and the behavior
of enterprisesdthe evidence from high energy consuming enterprises. Sci. Res.
Manag. 10, 130e138 [in Chinese].
Zhou, X.G., 1999. A review on the research of the Chinese organizational and
institutional change. Sociol. Res. 4, 26e43 [in Chinese].
Zhou, S.D., 2011. The research on influential factors of corporate environmental
behavior. J. Stat. Decis. 22, 181e183 [in Chinese].
Zhou, H.C., Ji, X., 2009. The evolution of China's environmental protection policy in
thirty years of reform and opening up. J. Nanjing Univ. Philos.y Humanit. Soc.
Sci. 1, 31e40 ([in Chinese]).
Zhu, Q.H., Sarkis, J., Lai, K.H., 2007. Green supply chain management: pressures,
practices and performance within the Chinese automobile industry. J. Clean.
Prod. 15, 1041e1052.