Barriers to Green Procurement Adoption Among U.S. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

The aim of the study was to investigate the reasons behind the existence of green procurement practice and the barriers to the adoption of green procurement among the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in California, both internal and external. A quantitative cross-sectional approach was deployed, given the elucidations through the Institutional Theory, Resource-Based View (RBV), and Stakeholder Theory. A purposive sampling method that involved the use of structured questionnaires to collect data was carried out on 400 SMEs in various industries. SPSS version 27 was used to perform descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression analysis. The results indicate that SMEs are performing well in terms of the adoption of green procurement by including environmental considerations in procurement policies and practices. These two internal factors, leadership commitment and organisational culture, were found to be significant drivers, but employee awareness and financial constraint, on the other hand, did not demonstrate any statistical significance. Regulatory and policy barriers had positive effects at the external level on the adoption of green procurement, whereas supplier and market constraints did not evoke any significant effect.