The Drivers of Firms' Environmental Management: Soft Environmental Management vs. Hard Environmental Management

Environmental management is an effective approach to realize sustainable development. Environmental management is divided into two dimensions, soft environmental management and hard environmental management in this article and the drivers of these two dimensions are analyzed. 211 valid survey data from manufacturing firms are used to test the hypotheses. It is found that regulatory pressure, market pressure, slack resources and top management's environmental awareness have positive effects on both soft environmental management and hard environmental management. Furthermore, soft environmental management is more susceptible to be affected by external pressures of government and market, while hard environmental management is more likely to be driven by internal pressures of slack resources and top management's environmental awareness.