Determinants of Green Practice Adoption for Logistics Companies in China

This paper aims to analyze the factors influencing the adoption of green practices in Chinese logistics industry. The determinant factors are composed of technological, organizational, and environmental dimensions.

A questionnaire survey on the green practice adoption of Chinese logistics companies was conducted, and 322 samples were analyzed. Research results reveal that relative advantage and compatibility of green practices, organizational support, quality of human resources, regulatory pressure, and governmental support have significantly positive influences on the adoption of green practices for Chinese logistics companies.

Environmental uncertainty and green practice’s complexity have significantly negative influences on green practice adoption.

However, the influence of customer pressure is not significant for Chinese logistics companies. This paper also suggests implications and opportunities for future research.

Introduction
More than two decades of economic reforms have brought China unprecedented economic growth.

While China continues to develop into a global manufacturing base and a huge consumer market, it suffers from various serious environmental problems such as air pollution, energy waste, and water pollution.

The environmental crisis has led to some moral doldrums in China (Ip, 2009). In order to mitigate the environmental degradation in China, the Chinese government has stipulated several environmental policies, and many companies operating in China have begun to adopt a variety of environmental management practices. Several researchers (e.g. Christmann and Taylor, 2001; Zhu et al., 2005, 2008) also investigated the implementation of environmental management in Chinese manufacturing enterprises.

However, scant attention has been paid to the environmental issues in Chinese service sectors. The service sectors are traditionally assumed to have less environmental impact than the manufacturing sectors. Nevertheless, some service sectors, such as the logistics industry, consume remarkable natural resources and generate tremendous contaminants, and thus need to address more efforts on environmental management (Murphy and Poist, 2003; Sarkis et al., 2004).

Therefore, more effort is required to study environmental issues in Chinese service sectors. In order to fill the research gap, this article will study the adoption of green practices in Chinese logistics industry.