Antecedents of Corporate Environmental Commitments: The Role of Customers

Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi and Alexander Brem
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Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi: CENTRUM Católica Graduate Business School, Lima 15023, Peru

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-10

Abstract: The management of natural environments has become a fundamental issue for companies in recent years. A firm’s environmental commitment affects all levels of its operation. In this study, we investigated whether having an effective and constant relationship with customers over time (customer capital) makes a difference to firms with a high environmental commitment compared with less environmentally committed firms. We found support for our idea by using original survey data from 149 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Iran (2016–2017). Furthermore, we found that customer capital enhances environmental collaboration with customers which, in turn, has a positive impact on the firm’s environmental commitments. These findings provide empirical evidence for the important role of “getting closer to customers” as a way of enhancing corporate environmental responsibility in developing countries with weak institutional environments.

Keywords: corporate environmental commitments; customer capital; environmental collaboration; SMEs; developing country (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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