The effects of sustainability innovation and supply chain resilience on sustainability performance: Evidence from China’s cold chain logistics industry

Figures & data

Figure 1. The conceptual framework.

Figure 2. Research process.

Table 1. Measurement items.

Construct	Revised items	Sources
Sustainability Innovation (SI)	1. Our company focuses on significant improvements in products (services), processes, and/or organisational methods oriented towards increasing sustainability.	Souto (2022)
	2. Our company encourages radical innovation (breakthrough) oriented towards increasing sustainability.
	3. Our company promotes business model innovation and/or business concept innovation with an important contribution towards increasing sustainability.
	4. Our company endeavours to improve sustainable innovativeness and sustainable innovation capacity.
	5. Our company supports open sustainability innovation.
Supply Chain Resilience (SCRE)	1. Our company with its supply chain partners are well prepared to deal with the financial outcomes of supply chain risk events.	Yu et al., (2019)
	2. Our company with its supply chain partners are able to adequately respond to unexpected risks by quickly restoring its product flow.
	3. Our company with its supply chain partners can quickly return to its original state after experiencing risky events.
	4. Our company with its supply chain partners can move to a new, more desirable state after experiencing risky events.
	5. Our company with its supply chain partners have the ability to maintain a desired level of control over the structure and function of the supply chain during the time of risky events.
	6. Our company with its supply chain partners have the ability to extract meaningful and useful knowledge from risky events.
Economic Performance (ECP)	1. Our sales have increased over the past three years.	Khan et al. (2021)
	2. Our profit has grown over the past three years.
	3. Our return on investment has increased over the past three years.
	4. Our market share has increased over the past three years.
Environmental Performance (ENP)	1. We have improved the company’s environmental situation over the past three years.	Souto (2022)
	2. We have reduced air emissions across our processes over the past three years.
	3. We have reduced hazardous/harmful/toxic material consumption over the past three years.
	4. We have increased the use of renewable energy and recycled materials over the past three years.
	5. We have reduced waste across our processes over the past three years.
	6. We have reduced resource consumption (energy, raw materials, etc.) over the past three years.
Social Performance (SOP)	1. Employees’ occupational health and safety have improved over the past three years.	Khan et al., (2021)
	2. Employees’ training and education have increased over the past three years.
	3. Our employee motivation has increased over the past three years.
	4. Our employee job satisfaction has improved over the past three years.
	5. Our employee turnover ratio has decreased over the past three years.

Table 2. Demographic profile.

Title	Description	Frequency	Percentage (%)
Gender	Female	74	36.3
	Male	130	63.7
Age	18–25	1	0.5
	26–35	61	29.9
	36–45	89	43.6
	46–55	34	16.7
	>55	19	9.3
Education	High school or below	25	12.3
	College degree	54	26.5
	Bachelor	89	43.6
	Master or above	36	17.6
Position	Executive	49	24.0
	Business operation managers	87	42.6
	Supply chain manager	39	19.1
	Risk managers	18	8.8
	Other managers	11	5.4
Main business fields	Warehousing	53	26.0
	Transportation	65	31.9
	Distribution	32	15.7
	Information transaction	21	10.3
	Integrated business	33	16.2
Number of employees	<50	24	11.8
	51–100	60	29.4
	101–200	85	41.7
	>200	35	17.2
Type of sub-industry	Fruits and vegetables	61	29.9
	Meat, aquatic and dairy products	96	47.1
	Vaccines, drugs and special products	17	8.3
	Any two or more of the above types involved	30	14.7

Table 3. Total variance explained.

	Initial Eigenvalues			Extraction sums of squared loadings
Component	Total	% of Variance	Cumulative %	Total	% of Variance	Cumulative %
1	9.952	38.278	38.278	9.952	38.278	38.278
2	2.687	10.333	48.612	2.687	10.333	48.612
3	2.217	8.526	57.138	2.217	8.526	57.138
4	2.049	7.879	65.017	2.049	7.879	65.017
5	1.637	6.296	71.314	1.637	6.296	71.314
6	0.642	2.467	73.781
7	0.567	2.179	75.96
8	0.548	2.106	78.067
9	0.485	1.866	79.933
10	0.471	1.81	81.743
11	0.42	1.615	83.358
12	0.412	1.586	84.944
13	0.383	1.474	86.418
14	0.377	1.449	87.868
15	0.337	1.295	89.162
16	0.33	1.27	90.433
17	0.321	1.236	91.669
18	0.309	1.189	92.858
19	0.295	1.134	93.991
20	0.278	1.071	95.062
21	0.257	0.989	96.051
22	0.239	0.919	96.97
23	0.233	0.897	97.867
24	0.206	0.791	98.658
25	0.203	0.782	99.441
26	0.145	0.559	100

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Table 4. Assessment of measurement model.

Constructs	Items	Loading	CA	rho_a	rho_c	AVE
SI	SI1	0.847	0.901	0.906	0.926	0.716
	SI2	0.827
	SI3	0.824
	SI4	0.868
	SI5	0.863
SCRE	SCRE1	0.846	0.902	0.905	0.924	0.67
	SCRE2	0.814
	SCRE3	0.819
	SCRE4	0.826
	SCRE5	0.829
	SCRE6	0.776
ECP	ECP1	0.869	0.891	0.891	0.924	0.754
	ECP2	0.885
	ECP3	0.875
	ECP4	0.843
ENP	ENP1	0.825	0.909	0.910	0.930	0.688
	ENP2	0.811
	ENP3	0.831
	ENP4	0.852
	ENP5	0.846
	ENP6	0.809
SOP	SOP1	0.845	0.904	0.904	0.928	0.722
	SOP2	0.848
	SOP3	0.867
	SOP4	0.834
	SOP5	0.855

Table 5. Fornell-Larcker test.

	SI	SCRE	ECP	ENP	SOP
SI	0.846
SCRE	0.403	0.819
ECP	0.386	0.402	0.868
ENP	0.442	0.499	0.422	0.829
SOP	0.468	0.44	0.454	0.342	0.85

Table 6. HTMT method.

	ECP	ENP	SCRE	SI	SOP
ECP
ENP	0.467
SCRE	0.442	0.55
SI	0.426	0.485	0.447
SOP	0.506	0.376	0.483	0.514

Figure 3. Research framework with results.

Notes: SI, sustainability innovation; SCRE, supply chain resilience; ECP, economic performance; ENP, environmental performance; SOP, social performance.

Table 7. Hypotheses testing.

Hypotheses	Relationships	β	SE	VIF	R^2	f^2	Q^2	t-values	Decision
H1	SI -> ECP	0.267***	0.062	1.194	0.222	0.077	0.160	4.334	Supported
H2	SI -> ENP	0.233***	0.064	1.286	0.350	0.065	0.233	3.667	Supported
H3	SI -> SOP	0.279***	0.068	1.370	0.345	0.087	0.243	4.093	Supported
H4	SCRE -> ECP	0.295***	0.064	1.194		0.093		4.600	Supported
H5	SCRE -> ENP	0.323***	0.067	1.306		0.123		4.813	Supported
H6	SCRE -> SOP	0.225**	0.069	1.467		0.053		3.236	Supported
H7	ECP -> ENP	0.202**	0.064	1.285		0.049		3.136	Supported
H8	ECP -> SOP	0.257***	0.066	1.348		0.075		3.920	Supported
H9	ENP -> SOP	−0.002	0.075	1.538		0.000		0.021	Not supported

Notes: SI, sustainability innovation; SCRE, supply chain resilience; ECP, economic performance; ENP, environmental performance; SOP, social performance; *p-value < 0.05, **p-value < 0.01, ***p-value < 0.001.

Table 8. PLSpredict.

	Q²predict	PLS-SEM_RMSE	LM_RMSE
ECP1	0.160	1.551	1.583
ECP2	0.163	1.583	1.572
ECP3	0.127	1.635	1.615
ECP4	0.169	1.551	1.526
ENP1	0.215	1.491	1.542
ENP2	0.225	1.441	1.493
ENP3	0.221	1.493	1.538
ENP4	0.227	1.434	1.505
ENP5	0.214	1.487	1.557
ENP6	0.155	1.541	1.599
SOP1	0.193	1.506	1.538
SOP2	0.200	1.451	1.472
SOP3	0.211	1.430	1.474
SOP4	0.208	1.443	1.480
SOP5	0.189	1.551	1.600

Souto, J. E. (2022). Organizational creativity and sustainability-oriented innovation as drivers of sustainable development: Overcoming firms’ economic, environmental and social sustainability challenges. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 33(4), 805–826. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMTM-01-2021-0018

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Yu, W., Jacobs, M. A., Chavez, R., & Yang, J. (2019). Dynamism, disruption orientation, and resilience in the supply chain and the impacts on financial performance: A dynamic capabilities perspective. International Journal of Production Economics, 218, 352–362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.07.013

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Khan, N. U., Wu, W., Saufi, R. B. A., Sabri, N. A. A., & Shah, A. A. (2021). Antecedents of sustainable performance in manufacturing organizations: A structural equation modeling approach. Sustainability, 13(2), 897. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020897

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Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.