Determinants of firm compliance to environmental laws: a case study of Vietnam

This paper seeks to develop a model of firm compliance behavior to environmental laws with specific focus on firms operating in Vietnam. Using an institutional approach, the paper employs Scott's (Institutions and organizations, 2nd ed., Sage, Thousand Oaks 2001) "Three pillars of institution" as the generic theoretical framework for the synthesis of literature on compliance across fields. This study used a questionnaire-based survey to examine the validity of the factors identified in the literature. The method was face-to-face interviews with the managers of 63 enterprises operating in Vietnam. The hypotheses were tested using mean importance ratings, t-test of the means, and factor analysis. Almost all the listed factors determining compliance were found to be applicable to the responding companies. The level of importance placed on different factors were analyzed using Anova test and were found to vary across companies with different sizes and business structures.