Heterogeneous behavioral patterns influencing the proactive environmental orientation of firms: How does your company look?

Abstract

Components related to sustainable development – such as environmental attitude, eco-innovation or environmental management – are considered key variables at the competitive level, which is why it has become urgent to study which factors motivate companies to move towards a more proactive environmental attitude. The identification of different groups in connection with estimates in the inner path model constitutes a critical issue when applying the path modelling methodology. In this paper, we identify groups of firms with similar behaviour (that is, firm segments) using the FIMIX-PLS algorithm, allowing companies to identify their environmental behaviour and therefore to make proper decisions when enhancing their environmental approach. We surveyed and interviewed 135 industrial companies located in the Valencia region of Spain. The results indicate that companies belong to three different groups that are defined by their motivation towards environmental proactivity, namely “environmental opponents”, “environmental driven” and “environmental trainers”.

Keywords:

• environmental orientation
• environmental drivers
• environmental proactivity
• Spanish industrial firms
• sustainable behavior
• FIMIX analysis
• PLS study

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Spanish Economy and Competitiveness Ministry for its support through the research projects (EC02011-27369 & ECO2012-36685), and the Universitat Politècnica de València for its research funding of the project (SP20140647).