Driving Mechanism of Greening Corporate Environmental Behaviour Under the “Dual-Carbon” Goal: A Study Based on Grounded Theory Study

In order to cope with global warming, the Chinese government is actively promoting the “dual-carbon” target policy, a green and efficient system which will become the future development direction of China’s energy system. As the main body of the carbon emissions of enterprises is bound to be the focus of governance, we must accelerate green transformation. In this paper, we use procedural rooting theory, collect data from field interviews, and use open coding, principal axis coding, selective coding, and a theoretical saturation test to explore antecedent motivation mechanisms and the consequent pathway of the green change in corporate environmental behaviours under the “dual-carbon” goal. We aim to clarify the evolution of “internal and external factors—enterprise green change willingness—green change behavior” to construct a theoretical model. The results show that the influence of and interaction effects among the micro-level, macro-environmental level, and meso-industry level dimensions of enterprise will drive companies to make green changes and adopt green change behaviours in the forms of strategic change and innovation optimisation. This study enriches the theoretical framework of green change in corporate environmental behaviour under the rigid constraint of the “dual-carbon” goal and provides countermeasure suggestions for the successful achievement of the “dual-carbon” goal at the corporate body level.