Place Attachment,Perceived Moral Obligation,and Corporate Environmental Responsibility

Corporate environmental responsibility(CER)is a hot issue in current research,but few researchers study the motivation of CER from the perspective of managers’psychology.Addressing this issue,this study empirically examined the relationship between perceived moral obligation,place attachment,and CER,as well as the mediating role of managers’ environmental behavior intention and the moderating role of perceived stakeholder environmental pressure based on the upper echelons theory.The survey conducted among 238 firms,results show that:First,perceived moral obligation and place attachment has a significant positive influence on managers’environmental behavior intention;Second,managers’ environmental behavior intention mediates the influence of perceived moral obligation and place attachment on CER;Third,perceived stakeholder environmental pressure positively moderate the linkage between place attachment whereas negatively moderate the relationship between perceived moral obligation in managers’ environmental behavior intention,which has a moderating effect on the mediating effect of managers’ environmental behavior intention.These results suggest that executive characteristic plays a significant role in the implementation and participation of CER.However,the stakeholder pressure may reduce the effectiveness of the initiative CER.This result may explain why the reality is not in line with the decision-makers’ expectations,and stakeholder expectations do not ensure that CER is adopted.This study is expected to contribute to the existing literature in the following aspects:(1)from the perspective of informal institution,it makes up for the deficiency of the research on the organizational level of the affective variable of executives-place attachment,and enriches the existing research on place attachment.Furthermore,it also proves the relationship between perceived moral obligation and CER in the Chinese context.(2)verify the mediating effect of managers’environmental intention on place attachment and perceived moral obligation and CER,and fill in the research on the influence mechanism of executives’ characteristic on CER;(3)by using a mediation model with mediation model to demonstrate the differential regulatory effect of stakeholder pressure,we expand the body of CER research and provide new evidence for how stakeholders influence CER in the Chinese context.(4)previous studies on CER are all based on institutional theory and stakeholder theory.This paper is based on the perspective of the informal institution(executive emotion and attitude),enriches relevant researches on the Upper Echelons Theory and expands the applicable scope of the Upper Echelons Theory.Implications for future research and policies are discussed.