Advancing eco-excellence: Integrating stakeholders’ pressures, environmental awareness, and ethics for green innovation and performance

The environment is a major issue for both society and industry. Stakeholder demands, environmental ethics and environmental awareness may all have a substantial impact on a company's environmental performance. In this research, we investigate the impact of stakeholders' pressures, environmental ethics, and environmental awareness on environmental performance, which is mediated through the concept of green innovation. A survey questionnaire is used in the study to gather information from 410 managers working in different Chinese manufacturing firms. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to assess the data and test the assumptions that have been put forward. According to the study's results, stakeholders' pressures in terms of regulatory pressures, customer pressures, and competitor pressures; environmental ethics, and environmental awareness all had a positive effect on both green product innovation and green process innovation, which in turn had a favorable impact on environmental performance. Moreover, both green product and process innovation partially mediated the link between stakeholders' pressures, environmental ethics, and environmental performance except in the case of environmental awareness. These findings provide light on the significance of stakeholder demands, environmental ethics, and environmental awareness in encouraging green innovation and increasing environmental performance.