The influences of environmental legislation complexity and external support on SMEs’ environmental responsiveness Moderated by financial performance and SME size
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2022-07-07
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en
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Research into factors influencing SMEs' environmental responsiveness has been sparked by a growing awareness. This study seeks to extent the knowledge regarding this subject by investigating the influences of environmental legislation complexity and external support on the environmental practice adoption of SMEs. Moreover, the study adheres to calls that factors influencing SMEs could vary across the category, as SMEs are not a homogenous group. It is therefore, that recent financial performance and SME size are included as potential moderators on the relationship between environmental legislation complexity and SMEs’ environmental practice adoption. Additionally, the possible moderating effect of SME recent financial performance on the relationship between external support and environmental responsiveness is included. For the analysis, a dataset consisting over 9000 SMEs originating from the 28 countries of the European Union (as of January 1st 2017) has been used. The results of the ordinal logistic regression show a surprising finding that environmental legislation complexity positively influences SMEs’ environmental responsiveness. Furthermore, this positive effect is proven to be significantly weaker for SMEs with higher financial performance and larger size. Ultimately, this study confirms the results of prior research by finding that external support also has a positive impact on the environmental practice adoption of firms.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen