1. Introduction
In the 21st century, the extensive economic growth has caused serious negative impacts on the ecological environment, where the shortage of resources, the environmental pollution, and ecological degradation are the critical challenges faced by the countries around the world [
1]. According to the report of the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) [
2], more than 40% of cities around the world have faced the problem of air quality and more than 1,200 people died because of environment-related events every year. Hence, environmental problems have become the biggest threat to human pursuit of ecological well-being index [
1]. Strengthening corporate environmental responsibility and practicing green sustainable practice have become important strategic measures related to national economy and people’s livelihood. In 2017, China has announced the documents of national green development strategy that clarify the green development concept that “clear water and green mountains are as valuable as mountains of gold and silver”, providing a new development path for enterprise development in the new era [
3]. Green sustainable practice is an important measure of the national green strategy system, which involves energy conservation, emission reduction, waste management, pollution control, and other aspects, all of which aim to reduce the damage to the ecological environment caused by the production process of enterprises and achieve the goal of harmonious economic and environmental development [
4]. With the increasing concern for environmental issues, green sustainable practice is no longer a fashionable term [
4,
5]. Under the government’s environmental regulation, how to promote energy conservation and emission reduction, strengthen waste management and improve green sustainable practice of enterprises have become challenging practical problems faced by the government and enterprises [
4], which attract attention from academia, politicians and commercial circles.
Enterprises are regarded as important subjects to perform sustainable practice, who should take ecological environment into account and promote the coordinated and sustainable development of economy and ecological environment [
6,
7]. Due to the complexity of green sustainable practices, the incentives of enterprises are not only driven by commercial demand and environmental protection [
8,
9], but also the responsibility of enterprises to pursue environmental sustainability [
10,
11]. However, the urgency of environmental protection and the ability of practice may vary with the environmental beliefs and attitudes of managers of the enterprises [
12]. Robertson and Barling (2011) suggest that environmental characteristics of managers are an important source to motivate enterprises to conduct environmental protection behaviors and promote green and sustainable practices [
13]. However, the current academic research on the environmental behavior of enterprises in China mostly places attention on the factors regarding enterprise strategy. For instance, Jabbour [
14] discussed environmental activities of enterprises; Pinzone [
15] analyzed the green supply chain management; Bai and Zeng studied enterprise environment behavior under the national system theory [
1]. The research on the correlation between managers’ environmental characteristics and enterprises’ environmental behaviors is still weak, which lacks the interpretation of green sustainable practices. Hence, it is necessary to deepen the role of managers’ environmental factors in pro-environment activities of enterprises, and to carry out research on environmental protection behavior of enterprises at the managerial level by focusing on the senior leaders. In addition, waste management is a pro-environment activity aiming at mitigation of negative impacts of waste and is argued to be one of the key driving forces for sustainable practice of enterprises [
16,
17,
18]. However, existing literature mainly focuses on the perspective of green innovation or environmental regulation [
19,
20,
21] while there is inadequate research regarding the influence of environmental characteristics of managers on firms’ pro-environmental behavior such as waste management.
In order to extend the research paradigm of green sustainable practices and enrich the theoretical basis, this study focuses on the impacts of environmental characteristics of managers on sustainable practice and applies the cognitive-behavioral theory to explore the mechanism of how the managers’ ascribed responsibility can affect the sustainable practice. In particular, the authors introduce waste management as mediation variable, green self-efficacy as moderating variable and builds the moderator mediation model indicating the action path of “responsibility attribution to waste management to sustainable practice”. Hence, this paper can fill the academic gap from the perspective of managers to explore the research paradigm of sustainable practices. Revealing the impacts of environmental characteristics of managers on enterprise’s pro-environment activities, this paper aims to provide theoretical and practical support for managers to strengthen responsibility attribution and practice green sustainable practice under government environmental regulation.
The structure of this paper is as follows: the first part is the introduction; the second part elaborates the theory and hypothesis; the third part discusses the research methods of this paper. The fourth section is the empirical analysis of the research hypothesis; the last part is the conclusion and limitations of this study.
3. Methods
This section may be divided by subheadings. It should provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
3.1. Sample and Procedures
The measurement content of empirical analysis is based on the mature measurement content which has been formed in the existing literature at home and abroad, However, considering the cultural differences at home and abroad, in order to ensure the validity of the measurement, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with middle and senior managers of pre-cooperative enterprises before the questionnaire was conducted. Subsequently, face-to-face interviews with senior and middle-level intentional enterprises and questionnaire surveys were conducted with the help of industry associations; the support of government cooperation projects and in collaboration with MBA students in Tong Ji university in China. The survey was conducted from March to May in 2019. Finally, 171 questionnaires were collected out of 200 visited enterprises with the response rate of 85.5%; and 149 questionnaires were collected with the effective rate of 74.5%. Among the sample enterprises, there exists 82 state-owned enterprises accounting for 55%, and the rest were joint-stock enterprises, private enterprises, joint ventures and so on. Regarding the industry type, 31% of the sample enterprises are recognized as non-ferrous metal manufacturing industry, with the scale of employees varying from 50 to 1000 or more. The enterprises involved in this study constitute different types of ownership, company size, and industry, which have a strong overall representation.
3.2. Measurements
Variable Measurement
This study involves four variables: ascribed responsibility, waste management, green sustainable practices, and green self-efficacy. In order to ensure the reliability and validity of the variable measurement in this study, the authors refer to the existing research, and determine the final scale measurement with the consultation and review of experts, which is shown in
Appendix A.
Green sustainable practice refers to the sustainable practice with integration of green concept to reduce the damage of ecological environment resulted from enterprise production process [
45]. Green sustainable practice was measured using 5 items (see
Appendix A), adapted from Kerr [
45] et al. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is 0.826, which indicates that the measurement of this variable has high reliability [
46].
Ascribed responsibility is an important part of normative activation theory, which emphasizes whether an individual can take responsibility for the consequences of a certain behavior and change the unfavorable behavioral attitude [
22]. Ascribed responsibility was measured using 4 items (see
Appendix A), adapted from Steg and De Groot et al [
22]. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is 0.707, which is higher than 0.7, indicating that the variable has good reliability].
Waste management refers to the effective management of solid wastes and wastewater produced by enterprises during the process of production and operation, which aims to reduce the negative environment impacts; promote utilization of resources; and maximize the economic and environmental benefits [
17]. In order to measure it scientifically, 4 items (see
Appendix A), adapted from Tchobanoglous et al [
26] was applied. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is 0.881, showing that the measurement of this variable has high reliability .
Green self-efficacy integrates self-efficacy with green factors, which emphasizes the subjective judgment of whether an individual can effectively solve environmental problems.
Green self-efficacy was measured using 5 items (see
Appendix A), adapted from Chen et al [
39]. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient is 0.932, which shows that the green self-efficacy measurement scale has good reliability.
Independent variables, dependent variables, mediating variables and moderating variables in this study were all measured using Likert scale: 5 means "strongly agree";1 means strongly disagree.
In addition, in order to ensure the robustness of the hypothesized relationship, enterprise type, age, and education level of managers were conducted as control variables in this study.
3.3. Analytical Strategy
Before testing the hypothesis in this study, LISREL8.7 (Scientific Software International, Inc., Lincolnwood, IL, USA, 2004) was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis for four variables: ascribed responsibility waste management, green sustainable practice and green self-efficacy. The mediating effect of waste management was analyzed through method proposed by Baron and Kenny. The moderate effect is tested by referring to Cohen’s method. In addition, the authors adopted Collaborative-bootstrapping method posed by Edwards and Lambert to analyze the mediating effect of waste management between managers’ responsibility and green sustainable practice under different levels of green self-efficacy.
6. Conclusions
Based on normative activation theory and cognitive behavior theory, this study introduces intermediary variable—waste management, moderating variable—green self-efficacy, constructs moderated mediation model, and focuses on the relationship between environmental characteristics of managers and green sustainable practice, Highlight the importance of managers’ ascribed responsibility and green self-efficacy. The empirical results show that managers with ascribed responsibility will consider the impact of their own decisions on the environment, and then strengthen waste management in the process of enterprise operation and management, so as to promote the development of enterprise green and sustainable practice. Meanwhile, waste management is the key driving force for enterprises to practice green and sustainable practices. In addition, green self-efficacy of managers positively regulates the action path of waste management on green sustainable practice, and positively regulates the indirect effect of managers’ ascribed responsibility attribution on green sustainable practice through waste management. That is to say, managers with higher green self-efficacy are more likely to have a positive impact on enterprise green sustainable practices through enterprise waste management. The research conclusion verifies the research paradigm proposed in this study, which is helpful for enterprises to extract the successful factors and influencing paths of enterprises’ green sustainable practice from the perspective of managers’ environmental protection beliefs and attitudes and promote the healthy and steady development of green sustainable practice.
Although this study has achieved certain theoretical and practical significance, it also has limitations. First of all, the samples in this study mainly refer to manufacturing enterprises. In future studies, the sample area and industry scope can be expanded to improve the universality of the research. Secondly, this study takes green self-efficacy as the only moderating variable while there may exist other moderating variables. Thirdly, enterprise environmental protection behavior involves not only waste management, but also green technology innovation and energy conservation, which can be expanded in future studies. In addition, the manager of this study is only defined as the middle and senior leaders who are responsible for the production and operation of the enterprise and does not include stakeholders. Future research can be integrated with stakeholders to deepen the research content and ensure the scientific nature of the research.