Driving Mechanism of Greening Corporate Environmental Behaviour Under the “Dual-Carbon” Goal: A Study Based on Grounded Theory Study

Huan Wu () and Jianguo Du ()
Additional contact information
Huan Wu: School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
Jianguo Du: School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 10, 1-17

Abstract: In order to cope with global warming, the Chinese government is actively promoting the “dual-carbon” target policy, a green and efficient system which will become the future development direction of China’s energy system. As the main body of the carbon emissions of enterprises is bound to be the focus of governance, we must accelerate green transformation. In this paper, we use procedural rooting theory, collect data from field interviews, and use open coding, principal axis coding, selective coding, and a theoretical saturation test to explore antecedent motivation mechanisms and the consequent pathway of the green change in corporate environmental behaviours under the “dual-carbon” goal. We aim to clarify the evolution of “internal and external factors—enterprise green change willingness—green change behavior” to construct a theoretical model. The results show that the influence of and interaction effects among the micro-level, macro-environmental level, and meso-industry level dimensions of enterprise will drive companies to make green changes and adopt green change behaviours in the forms of strategic change and innovation optimisation. This study enriches the theoretical framework of green change in corporate environmental behaviour under the rigid constraint of the “dual-carbon” goal and provides countermeasure suggestions for the successful achievement of the “dual-carbon” goal at the corporate body level.

Keywords: “dual-carbon” targets; China; corporate green change behaviour; driving mechanism; grounded theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4708/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/10/4708/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:10:p:4708-:d:1660257

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().