The association of corporate social responsibility and sustainable consumption and production patterns: The mediating role of green supply chain management

Sustainable consumption and production pattern (SCPP) in the food supply chain is the key agenda of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the entire globe may be falling short of its goals for the 2030 agenda as expected. The role of each member country, local businesses, and several supply chain stakeholders is crucial to the feasibility of achieving SCPP. Despite this, emerging countries and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in evolving industries still encounter significant challenges in realizing this objective. Therefore, the goal of this study is to close that gap by investigating how SCPP can be fulfilled. This research examined how corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices affect various stakeholders as well as green supply chain management (GSCM) in driving SCPP. It takes a quantitative approach, collecting the main information through a questionnaire-based survey. Respondents are individuals who have managerial roles in selected companies. In total, 466 valid response sheets were collected. SmartPLS (version 3.3.2) has been used to investigate the hypothesized relations. This research revealed that CSR (both internal & external) had a significant and beneficial influence on GSCM and SCPP. Besides, the findings indicate that GSCM is positively and significantly related to SCPP. This research contributes to the existing literature on SCPP by presenting a combined framework that has been empirically operationalized via the lenses of social cognitive theory, stakeholder theory, and resource-based view (RBV) theory. Additionally, it proposes a novel method for gaining SCPP using SMEs in the food supply chain in evolving markets as an experimental field of study that has not been sufficiently investigated in recent literature. It also suggests theoretical and managerial implications for different groups of stakeholders, making an important contribution not only to the firms’ sustainability, entities engaged in the supply chain, and society at large, but also to the application of SDGs.