Do pressures foster sustainable public procurement? An empirical investigation comparing developed and developing economies

摘要

There is limited understanding of how various pressures foster sustainable public procurement, particularly in the context of developed versus developing economies. Using Institutional Theory, this paper develops a theoretical model to provide a nuanced understanding of how institutional pressures and citizens' attitude towards sustainability affect the level of sustainability adoption in public procurement and how this impacts sustainability performance. Using a sample of 546 public procurement practitioners from 102 countries, a structural equation model to test the proposed hypotheses is developed. The proposed conceptual model has been validated on three categories of public procurement, namely goods, works, and services. Results show that institutional pressures and citizens' attitude towards sustainability significantly impact the level of sustainability adoption in public procurement, which, in turn, improves sustainability performance. The impact of these pressures differs in developed and developing economies. Accordingly, policymakers may harness various pressures according to their context and the procurement category to foster sustainability in public procurement. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.