Interacti,ve Effects Of Various Institutional Pressures Oncorporate Environmental Responsibility

This study investigates the role of institutional pressures in corporate environmental responsibility(CER)by testing the interacting effects among cognitive,regulative,and normative pressures at cross levels.Specifically,this research decomposes the cognitive dimension of CER into perceived environmental benefit and perceived ethical obligation to differentiate their mechanisms.The sample is obtained from 212firms within 34 industrial clusters.This study obtained two interesting findings by two-level regression modeling:First,although both perceived environmental benefit and perceived ethical obligation are significantly positively associated with CER,perceived environmental benefit plays more important role than perceived ethical obligation in affecting CER in China.Second,regulative and normative pressures play different roles in the positive effects of perceived environmental benefit and perceived ethical obligation on CER.Regulative pressure attenuates the effect of perceived environmental benefit and amplifies the effect of perceived ethical obligation.Meanwhile,normative pressure attenuates the effect of perceived ethical obligation.These findings suggest that heterogeneous interaction effects may reduce the efficiency of institutional pressures during the initial stage of CER diffusion.These results may explain why legal requirements and stakeholder expectations cannot ensure the extent to the adoption of CER as policy makers expect.This study is expected to contribute to the existing literature in the following aspects:First,this research theorizes and empirically investigates how firm-level cognitive pressure affects firm CER by decomposing this pressure into perceived environmental benefit and perceived ethical obligation.The findings highlight that although economic and ethical concerns can facilitate CER,economic-related cognitive pressure remains the dominant motive for CER in the Chinese context.Second,we transcend institutional theory and apply the institutional contingency perspective to investigate how institution-level regulative and normative pressures moderate the influence of firm-level cognitive pressure on CER.Our findings indicate that when a firm's organizational CER requirement is consistent with the institutional CER requirement,the firm would adopt further CER.Third,we tested the cross-level interactions by using a nested data structure(i.e.,firms within industrial clusters).Multilevel methods provide a methodological contribution to the field of CER because they offer appropriate theoretical foundation and statistical methods for extending institutional theory at cross levels.Furthermore,our findings have potential implications for environmental regulators and firm managers.First,the government and institutions can highlight the economic benefits of CER rather than only focusing on ethical obligation when promoting CER.Second,practitioners should highlight ethical obligation when persuading a firm that faces regulative pressure to engage in CER.In contrast,stakeholders should avoid emphasizing on firms' ethical obligation when persuading these firms to engage in CER.