An exploratory study of corporate social and environmental responsibility practices among apartment developers in China

Zhu, Q, Zhao, T., and Sarkis, J.

Journal of Green Building, Vol. 6, No. 3, 181-196, 2011.

In China corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) has gained increasing attention within industry and government.  Evidence exists for significant attempts to promote CSER by the Chinese government. As a critical ‘pillar’ industrial sector, urban residential apartment development has been a major contributor to China’s national gross domestic product.  This industry has also profoundly influenced social and environmental dimensions.  Thus, apartment developers in China have felt increased pressures to implement CSER practices.  Little research has sought to investigate CSER in this industry, whether in China or globally.  The objective of this paper is to empirically investigate, using a survey of 92 questionnaires from apartment development companies, CSER practices in this industrial sector.  In the empirical analysis we find that CSER practices can be grouped into basic, environmentally-related and extended practices.  We further compare these groupings of CSER practices among different sizes of apartment developers using multivariate analysis of variance and Scheffe multiple analysis tests. We also apply one-way analysis of variance and t-tests for comparisons of CSER practices among apartment developers from different cities and with different ownership structures. The results show that apartment developers generally implement environmentally-related and extended CSER practices at higher levels.  Residential apartment development is occurring in more developed cities, and thus apartment developers in these cities face more pressures for CSER practices.  Joint ventures are more likely to implement environmentally-related CSER practices. Research and managerial implications and future research directions are also presented in this work.

Keywords: Environment, China, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Sustainable Supply Chain, Construction, Built Environment, Green Building

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