Toward eco-friendly mining: forging an understanding of artisanal small scale gold mining firms' mercury-free mining behavior: a serial mediation-moderation analysis with evidence from Ghana

The increasing use of mercury in small scale mining and its implications has sparked an intensive mercury-free mining advocacy in Ghana. Despite the attention that this has drawn, existing studies tend to have explored the individual-level behavior antecedents, neglecting the salient firm-level dynamics to forging behavior. Therefore, this research develops a heuristic framework anchored on the norm activation and the institutional theory to probe mining firms' mercury-free mining behavior. It draws data (n = 570) from mining firms and analyze them using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. The results of data analysis revealed the positive relationship between awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility, which together related positively with firms' norms. Also, firms' norms related positively to mercury-free mining behavior. While the linkage between regulatory quality and mercury-free mining behavior received affirmation, the moderating effect of proactive environmental strategy on the relationship between firm norms and mercury-free mining behavior on one breadth, and regulatory quality and mercury-free mining behavior on the other, was confirmed. In addition to confirming the imperativeness of integrated theories (which contributed 43% in explained variance) to studying pro-social mining behavior, this research reiterates the effects of behavior and institutional factors to firm-level pro-social actions, a subject which has received little research attention. The research therefore recommends stakeholder synergy and multilevel governance as the pathway to promoting sustainable pro-social behavior.