Mechanism of governance pressures, green production and collaboration on the performance of maritime supply chain: Evidence from the moderating effect of government subsidies1

This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the combined mechanism of external governance pressures, green production and collaboration on maritime supply chain performance and examines the moderating effect of government subsidies. A theoretical model is constructed for the green transformation of the maritime supply chain by considering both external pressures and internal pushing forces. We collect data through a survey of management staff and frontline operators of maritime supply chain enterprises in China and apply Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to test the theoretical model. We found that coercive pressure is not sufficient to truly develop green supply chain practices in enterprises if there is no government subsidy, as this leads to compliant rather than innovative practice. Thus, policy makers need to be aware that coercive pressure alone does not lead to continuous improvement of environmental and economic performance. In addition, green production and collaboration do not directly produce economic performance, but indirectly improve it through environmental performance. This study provides both theoretical and practical references for maritime supply chain enterprises to deal with the increasingly stringent environ-mental regulations and improve their economic performance through green production transformation.