What drives small and medium enterprises towards sustainability? Role of interactions between pressures, barriers, and benefits

Abstract The literature on the subject of corporate social responsibility and environmental management in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has theorized about the different factors influencing the propensity of business owners/managers towards sustainability. However, the varying results and some gaps in these previous studies have highlighted the need to search for new models for the relationships among these drivers. This study theorizes and tests a model in which the decision flow of SME owners/managers is described as a multistep process in which the first push felt from internal and external pressures is mediated by two opposite forces: the positive influence exerted by the perceived benefits of sustainability and the negative influence exerted by the perceived barriers of implementing it. Data were collected from an Italian SME survey and analyzed through structural equation modelling. The results confirmed the hypotheses of a mediated path of influence, thus highlighting the different roles of factors that enable and block sustainability in SMEs, with prospective business and policy‐making implications in the light of the pursuit of the United Nation's recommended Sustainable Development Goals.