FACTORS INFLUENCING GREEN PURCHASING ADOPTION FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (SMEs) IN MALAYSIA

Acute awareness of environmental problems following continuous environmental deterioration drives growing SMEs to adopt green purchasing practices. SMEs are recognized as the main source of environmental risk and bottleneck in adopting green purchasing practices. This is mainly due to SMEs are lack of information and resources or expertise to deal with the environmental issues. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the factors influencing green purchasing adoption for EMS IS0 14001 SMEs in Malaysia. A cross-sectional approach using survey was conducted among all the EMS 14001 certified SMEs listed under the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) 2012 directory. A research model been proposed as supported with stakeholders theory. The research model comprises of green purchasing adoption as a dependent variable while government regulations, customer pressures, top management support, supplier relationship and perceived benefits as independent variables and corporate social responsibility as moderating variable. Results show that only government regulations, customer pressures and perceived benefits were found to be positively and significantly influencing green purchasing adoption for SMEs in Malaysia. Limitations and suggestion for future research are discussed.