Does proactive green logistics management improve business performance? A case of Chinese logistics enterprises

Sustainability is a subject of growing interest in business and environmental management. Many previous studies have emphasized the trade-off between economic activities such as manufacturing and its effect on the environment. Moreover, previous studies have mainly focused on manufacturing enterprises; however, no study has yet to cover the logistics sector. This study fills these gaps by testing the causal relationship between proactive green management and the sustainable performance of logistics enterprise in China. In addition, when compared with previous literature that discusses the partial relationship between environmental variables and firm performance, this study synthesizes the factors of green awareness and green strategy that may influence green logistics management in a total systematic structural equation model (SEM). SEM has an advantage in examining the causal relationship between green logistics practice and its business performance. The result shows that green logistics practice has a positive impact on sustainable business performance. This impact is composed of both a positive financial and environmental performance, while the relationship between green awareness and business performance and the influence of green strategy on business performance is not significant.