Empirical Research of Participating in VEAs by Firms in China

VEAs (Voluntary environmental agreements) environmental management is a kind of environmental policy tool of improving environmental quality on the basis of voluntary participation and in the form of contract, now it has become one kind of new pattern. But there is not a satisfying answer to the question of ldquowhy does a firm participate in VEAs?rdquo this paper will study driving factors behind VEAs through model construction. Based on investigating many Chinese firms, we found that participating in VEAs voluntarily by firms is the common result of economic factors (improvement of production, driving of market) and non-economic factors (social pressure, environmental belief, corporate social responsibility (CSR)). We hope that the research can provide advices for government and corporations.