An examination of drivers and barriers to reducing carbon emissions in China’s manufacturing sector

• Date: 13 November 2017
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-07-2016-0171
• Pages: 1168-1195
• Published date: 13 November 2017
• Author: Nachiappan Subramanian,Muhammad Abdulrahman
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics

An examination of drivers and

barriers to reducing carbon

emissions in China’s

manufacturing sector

Nachiappan Subramanian

Department of Business Management and Economics, University of Sussex,

Brighton, UK, and

Muhammad Abdulrahman

Nottingham University Business School,

The University of Nottingham Ningbo China, Ningbo, China

Abstract

Purpose –Carbon Efficient Practices (CEPs) are gaining momentum due to the serious consequences of

climate change. While past studies have focused on the effects of either drivers or barriers to green practices

especially in the context of developed countries, relatively little attention has been devoted to the

simultaneous effects of drivers and barriers on product redesign, particularly in the context of China.

The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach –Using a blend of the Contextual Interaction Theory and Newton’s

second law of motion, this paper proposes a conceptual model that simultaneously examines the impact of

CEP drivers and barriers on product redesign and performance.

Findings –Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis on a sample of 239 Chinese manufacturing firms

indicated that drivers had substantially higher effects on product redesign and performancecompared to the

influence of other barriers.

Originality/value –Use of Newton’s second law of motion as a theoretical framework for understanding the

adoption of CEPs in the context of China is novel. Implications of this pattern of results on academic theory

building and practice are offered.

Keywords China, Drivers, Barriers, Reverse logistics, Manufacturing systems, Carbon efficient practices

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Climate change is a serious threat to humanity given its increasing negative effect in terms

of ozone layer depletion, air and water pollution, and depletion of non-renewable natural

resources upon which life generally depends. One of the major contributors to climate

change, for example, are greenhouse gas emissions and these are generally measured in

terms of carbon footprints. Different societal activities emit varying amount of carbon

footprints and among them industrial and logistics operations contributions are

predominant. These business operations emit wastes, unprocessed effluents, consume

exorbitant energy, and are generally not involved in eco-centric activities. Logistical

operations burn more fuel than other operation in order to transport goods from one point to

another. For example, it is estimated that logistics movement produces 20 percent of all

greenhouse gas emissions, consuming 35 billion gallons of diesel per year (Blanco and

Cotrill, 2013). It is not surprising therefore, that businesses, especially in manufacturing,

have come under global pressure to adopt Carbon Efficient Practices (CEPs) to reduce

emission (Stock et al., 2002; Fleischmann et al., 1997, 2003; Sarkis et al., 2010; Chaabane et al.,

2012; Liljestrand et al., 2015).

Extent literature reports a number of CEPs that includes closed loop supply chain,

extended product life cycle such as product redesign, production planning control for

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 28 No. 4, 2017

pp. 1168-1195

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-07-2016-0171

Received 14 October 2015

Revised 16 July 2016

12 January 2017

Accepted 15 March 2017

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-4093.htm

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IJLM

28,4

remanufacturing, inventory management, product recovery, reverse logistics (RL) and

carbon emission reduction (Chaabane et al., 2012; Liljestrand et al., 2015). In the developed

and/or industrialized countries, stri ngent CEPs regulations and their enforcem ent

mechanisms coupled with consumers’awareness drives business operations to implement

CEPs such as Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and extended producer

responsibility (EPR) designed to enforce the collection, treatment, recycling and/or safe

disposal after the end-of-life (EoL) of products, amongst other similar regulations (Rogers

and Tibben-Lembke, 2001; Ravi and Shankar, 2005; Wang et al., 2015).

The need to comply with CEPs regulations necessitates manufacturing firms re-design their

products to overcome barriers to CEPs through means such as ease of disassembly of returned

products for value extraction, recycling, reuse and/or remanufacturing. However, such

re-design innovations require significant initial capital investment –for resources, infrastructure,

training and setup –which constitutes a major barrier to firms embarking on such redesign

initiatives. Firms invest scarce resources in redesign initiatives (or any initiatives) only when

they are compelled to by clear insights on the real benefits of such investments. Predominant

firms’barriers to new innovative practices such as suggested redesign are financial support,

infrastructure and the technological systems necessary to provide capability to achieve desired

objectives, in addition to government support (Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 2001; Ravi and

Shankar, 2005; Lau and Wang, 2009; Zhu and Geng, 2013).

Extant studies indicate that while the initial cost for CEPs may be significant, business

operations and logistics are financially successful to a firm’s long-term business operations

(Stock et al., 2002; Fleischmann et al., 1997, 2003; Sarkis et al., 2010). Additionally, studies

have empirically demonstrated that CEPs have a direct impact on firms’economic

performance and their product redesign capability (Chan and Chan, 2008; Lai et al., 2013).

However, most of these studies associate or view the benefits from CEPs largely as by-

products of external pressures to comply with environmental regulations, peer pressure,

green trade barriers, amongst others (Stock et al., 2002; Fleischmann et al., 1997, 2003;

Sarkis et al., 2010; Abdulrahman et al., 2015). These studies failed to examine how firms

could be self-motivated toward CEPs implementation due to its strong attractiveness that

outweighs its inherent barriers. The role of barriers can be viewed as a resistance to change

and progress was well dealt with using Newton’s second law of motion. This has paramount

importance in the case of developing economies such as China where, despite being the

“global manufacturing factory,”China lacked stringent and enforceable environmental laws

allowing for increases in the intensity of these barriers (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2011).

This study posits that a greater motivation for CEPs lies in firms’realization of the

significant economic and overall sustainability benefits of such practices. We argue that

the enhanced sustainability derivable from CEPs in terms of waste elimination and the

cost savings gained through the reduced need for virgin raw mate rials required, in terms

of value/asset recovery practices of CEPs represents the true attraction for their

implementation and re-design; as opposed to regulations and their enforcements

(Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 2001; Stock et al., 2002; Lai et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2015).

Again this attraction corresponds to the acceleration observations of Newton’s second law

of motion. This is ev idenced in the fact that despite th e existence of similar environ mental

regulations in developed economies, in the case of China there is a lack of corresponding

stringent enforcement of regulations by government (Zhang et al., 2011; Lai and

Wong, 2012; Lai et al., 2013; Abdulrahman et al., 2014) and insufficient levels of customers’

green awareness (Smyth et al., 2008; Tantawi et al., 2009; Tan and Lau, 2010).

We therefore, posit that drivers of CEPs in developing economies, such as China, are

entirely different from those in developed economies’context for business operations and

logistics. It is therefore imperative to examine the situation from the perspective of these

emerging economies.

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Examination

of drivers and

barriers