Constructing an Adoption Model of Proactive Environmental Strategy: A Novel Quantitative Method of the Multi-Level Growth Curve Model

Abstract

To fill in the literature flaws that have not been detected in previous studies, this research, therefore, examines the driving factors of proactive environmental strategy (PES). First, this research proposes how corporate social responsibility (CSR) predicts the agricultural company’s PES through the intermediary mechanism of green organization identification (GOI) of the top management team (TMT) according to symbolic context and theory of high-level echelon, to solve the first gap in exploring what factors can drive the PES. Second, this research proposes a multi-level growth curve model (MGCM) to solve how individuals adjust their behavioral intentions over time according to their translation and understanding of their use environment, because past studies consist of almost cross-sectional properties. Third, past research has also neglected the multi-level framework, leading to hierarchical reasoning bias. Therefore, this research believes that the MGCM can fill in the multi-level gap. Finally, this research collected 400 TMT employees from 100 different agricultural companies in Taiwan in three-stage time for six months. The results show that CSR will significantly lead to more growth in GOI, and more growth in GOI will lead to more growth in PES adoption. The research results can not only advance the agricultural sustainability literature but also serve as a guide for agricultural companies to implement PES.