Environmental Proactivity and Environmental and Economic Performance: Evidence from the Winery Sector

Abstract

Environmental sustainability in the winery sector is receiving increased attention from governments, environmental groups, and consumers. The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between the degree of proactivity of a firm's environmental strategies and its business performance. The novelty of this research work lies in its definition of business performance, which includes business environmental performance in terms of reducing the firm's environmental impacts and eco-efficiency in the use of resources such as water, energy, and raw materials, in addition to its economic performance. A model is proposed and tested using a sample of 312 Spanish wineries. Data were analysed using partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM). The fitness and robustness of the structural model proved adequate. The results indicate positive correlation of environmental proactivity with economic and environmental performance. Although environmental proactivity improves business performance, it has a greater impact on reducing environmental impacts and improving eco-efficiency.

Environmental Proactivity and Firms’ Performance: Mediation Effect of Competitive Advantages in Spanish Wineries

“…Information about the population has been gathered in two stages. In the first stage, a questionnaire was compiled, tested and completed by Spanish winery managers during the month of November 2015 to obtain 312 valid answers (see [69]). In the second stage, this information was supplemented by searching for the wineries that had completed the questionnaire in the SABI database (System of Analysis of Iberian Balances).…”

“…Following Barba-Sánchez and Atienza-Sahuquillo [69], we consider environmental proactivity (EP) to be a multidimensional construct [78], whereby three different dimensions can be identified in the sphere of wineries (see [69]):…”

An Improved Eco-Efficiency Analysis Framework Based on Slacks-Based Measure Method

“…In addition, environmental proactivity has a positive and significant effect on the firm's economic value. It can improve the competitiveness of firms by reducing costs [5]. Hence, environmental proactivity has a greater influence on decreasing environmental pressures (resource consumption and waste emission) and improving eco-efficiency [5].…”

“…be the optimal solution of Model (5). α * i is the proportion of input i, which can be decreased by in the −g x direction.…”

“…This is because worst performance is included in the definition of the range, and efficiency results depending on the range defined [31]. For Model (5), under the constraint…”