The relationship between access to finance and green performance of SMEs in developing economies: corporate social responsibility as mediating

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effect of corporate social responsibility on access to finance and green performance of Small and medium-sized businesses in emerging economies like Pakistan. For this purpose quantitative research was done, data was collected through a questionnaire, and 327 respondents submitted the questionnaire from different SMEs operating in different sectors in Sialkot, Pakistan. SEM technique was applied to test the proposed hypotheses of the study, and collected first-hand data was analyzed by Smart-PLS. The results of the study show that there is a strong positive impact of access to finance on the green performance of SMEs operating in Sialkot, Pakistan, and the mediating effect of CSR is also positive and significant.