Impact of Green Entrepreneurship Orientation on Environmental Performance: The Natural Resource-Based View Perspective

Environmental sustainability is the primary task of environmental entrepreneurship by critically handling increased institutional, customer, and environmental pressures. Green entrepreneurship orientation (GEO) seeks to harmonize their relationships with the external environment to foster the impact of green innovation performance (GIP) on environmental performance (EP). Drawing upon the natural resource-based view, the study examines the effect of green entrepreneurship orientation on GIP and EP. Additionally, the moderating effect of managerial environmental concerns (MEC) on this relationship is also inspected. The results revealed that green absorptive capacity (GAC), environmental cooperation (EC), and MEC signicantly affect GEO. Furthermore, GEO positively inuenced GIP and EP. Indeed, GEO partially mediates GAC, EC, and managerial concern’s relationship on green innovation and EP. Additionally, MEC signicantly moderates the relationship between GEO and EP. Firms GEO should adequately enhance green practices performance and environmental performance to accommodate their external environment relationships. Theoretical and practical implications were also presented. green This research extends the body of knowledge of entrepreneurship and eco-innovation literature from the NRBV lens. Also, the study expands the NRBV lens by testing the theory in the body of entrepreneurship studies. This study addresses the strategic impact of environmental cooperation and managers' environmental awareness to foster green practices and environmental performance. Besides, this study also established the rst theoretical model that addresses three distinct drivers of environmental strategies in a single model that were previously has been ignored. In doing so, this study's ndings support the NRBV and extend the body of DCT by demonstrating the critical impact of the interrelationships highlighted in the research model under the umbrella of the NRBV.


Introduction
Drawing upon the Natural Resource-Based View (NRBV) lens, in the highly uncertain environment, rms search to capture business opportunities that led to create sustainable competitive advantages and improve environmental performance (Hart, 1995 Advancing the NRBV lens, this study argued that GEO is a strategic resource embedded within and between the core organizational culture and a dynamic capability that fosters rms' abilities to sense and capture opportunities and maintain their environmental activities. This can be succeeded by (1) facilitating green practices within core environmental activities; (2) using cooperation based on environmental responsibilities to motivate GEO proactive strategies that aim at improving green environmental activities; (3) acquiring and leveraging green knowledge within green activities; (4) applying green organizational knowledge and external environmental cooperation to enhance environmental performance.
GEO is a new promise seeking to improve both sides of an organization nancially and environmentally (Jiang et al., 2018). Since the core focus of GEO is to address environmental issues by supplying ecofriendly products (Guo, Wang, & Chen, 2020). Hence, GEO's primary responsibility is to respond to external ecological parties such as customer environmental awareness, governmental and societal regulations, economic and environmental concerns (Chen & Chang, 2013) by developing green practices (Kraus, Rehman, & García, 2020). GEO also ensures and prioritizes improving the green workplace environment to the relevant ndings was put forward. Next, the implications of the study from practical and theoretical perspectives were also furnished.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development
Green absorptive capacity (GAC) and green entrepreneurship orientation (GEO) Environmental entrepreneurship searching for eco-friendly opportunities for reducing pollution and improving sustainable environmental development. GEO is the proactive capability to alter and sense the surrounding restrictions and opportunities determined by time and place (Patel, 2019). Eco-friendly product and process is the key that constitutes GEO (Demirel, Li, Rentocchini, & Tamvada, 2019). This can be achieved by deploying clean technology and advanced systems that reduce hazardous waste, green training programs, workshops, green empowerment behavior, and green raw materials that these exploitation environmental activities  estimated to in uence its environmental performance. On the other hand, GAC helps rms spread green knowledge and determine core environmental activities that must be explored and exploited (Aboelmaged & Hashem, 2019; Cepeda-Carrion, Martelo-Landroguez, Leal-Rodríguez, & Leal-Millán, 2017). For example, green exploration refers to those activities that must be applied to new technologies and advanced processes, which in turn led to positively impact rms to generate clean energy and eco-product and hence, enhancing environmental sustainability (Hart & Dowell, 2011). Zahra, Filatotchev, and Wright (2009) acknowledged AC as one of the main determinants of entrepreneurs' success by enabling rms to build up new skills and business knowledge and reduce cognitive toughness, resulting in exploring and recognizing green opportunities.
Furthermore, Ng (2007) argues that AC supports entrepreneurs in exploring and mobilizing new resources to exploit eco-friendly opportunities. Besides, Engelen et al. (2014) argued that AC encourages GEO to deal with the uncertain environment by introducing environmental solutions to update green practices and explore opportunities. AC's core role is to create new knowledge (information), which supports entrepreneurs' cognitive skills and proactive behavior to quick environmental scanning and recognition capacity to detect opportunities and understand competitors' reactions (Zhang, Liang, Feng, Yuan, & Jiang, 2020). With high absorptive capacity, rms can quickly and accurately understand these information resources, combine the acquired information with existing ones effectively, and promote the transformation of new knowledge-the e ciency of transforming this knowledge into products and services increases (Engelen et al., 2014). This strategically led to motivating innovation activities (Sciascia et al., 2014).
Eco-entrepreneurial with su cient AC is often to explore eco-market opportunities, access to market information, tracking customers' information and preferences (Patel, Kohtamäki, Parida, & Wincent, 2015); in doing so, they pertinently develop green technologies to improve environmental and organizational performance (Zahra et al., 2009). Overall, AC enables entrepreneurs to promote green technology innovation. Recently, Patel (2019) studied how AC helps entrepreneurs determine and deal with opportunities during the development stage and stimulate their cognitive skills and alertness. Sciascia et al. (2014) empirically found that AC strengthens EO activities' impact on rm performance.
Another empirical study by Engelen et al. (2014) indicated that AC increasing EO's effect on rm performance when market turbulence is high, suggesting that AC is a parameter that controlling and enabling entrepreneur activities to achieve high environmental performance. An empirical study (Engelen et al., 2014) examined the moderation effect of AC on the relationship between EO, and rm performance were the results indicate that AC strengthens the EO-rm performance in turbulent market.
In the context of entrepreneurship and innovation, prior studies (Aboelmaged & Hashem, 2019;Engelen et al., 2014;Patel, 2019;Xue et al., 2019) have used AC as a determinant, moderation, and mediation on the relationship between EO, innovation, and rms' performance. Addressing environmental issues through eco-innovation in the presence of AC is utmost overlooked. Past studies examined the role of AC between EO and innovation outcomes separately, which led to yield inconclusive results and further debates about GAC's potential impact on the relationship between entrepreneurial ecosystem and their consequences on rms, individuals, and eco-system itself. Literature failed to provide any evidence about GAC's effects on GEO, GIP, and EP in a single model, how GAC encourages GEO proactively capabilities to address environmental opportunities still ambiguous and needs further investigations. Therefore, this study aims to ll this crucial gap by linking GAC-GEO to estimate GIP and EP's coupled effects. This study's ndings will open new rooms in the research stream and support environmental entrepreneurship and ecoinnovation literature and extend the body of knowledge of dynamic capability theory. In this study, GAC is viewed as a dynamic capability that strategically helps entrepreneurs alter environmental opportunities proactively. Thus, this study hypothesizes that: H1a: GAC positively in uences green entrepreneurship orientation.
Dynamic capability views green entrepreneurship as a proactive action taken to face unexpected environmental circumstances and ensure businesses' continuity (Jiang et al., 2018). Whereas GAC is the process of an organizational capacity to detect, absorb, and integrate newly acquired knowledge into the existing corporate processes (L. M. Pacheco, Alves, & Liboni, 2018). This could upgrade new skills and practices, routines, functions, know-how, and recon guring production systems (Xue et al., 2019). And thus, driving strategic resource creation affording long-term advantages (Grimpe Kaiser, 2010). Consequently, this study argued that the success of entrepreneur environmental proactive capability is highly associated with GAC. Green innovation is applying new ideas, leveraging environmental practices, green workplaces, green programs, and techniques to foster resource e ciency, pollution reduction, and eco-system . AC, therefore, is the primary key source for penetrating green innovation activities (Zhang et al., 2020). Accordingly, GIP and GAC fall within the natural resource-based view's core focus (Hart & Dowell, 2011). Thus, we believe that this will improve the natural environment (Hart, 1995) and enhance GEO capabilities (Guo et al., 2020;Patel, 2019).  Sciascia et al., 2014) have focused on the role of AC in enabling entrepreneurial capabilities to estimate entrepreneurial opportunities. However, predicting environmental opportunities that are the core expertise of this study is of utmost poor in the literature. Understanding the process of how GAC and GEO coupled together to tackle environmental issues and capture ecofriendly opportunities is a new research venture that this study is seeking to practical lled it and theoretically delineated it. By embedding GAC practices within GEO activities, it is surely believed that entrepreneur's alertness to predict eco-business opportunities able to be achieved. To overcome this critical gap in the literature, this study intends to examine the coupled impact of GAC-GEO to improve green practices and environmental performance. Drawing upon the NRBV and DCV lenses, the next hypotheses are proposed: H1b: GEO mediates the relationship between green absorptive capacity and green innovation performance.
H1c: GEO mediates the relationship between green absorptive capacity and environmental performance.
Effect of managerial environmental concern (MEC) on GEO GEO seeks to capture environmental opportunities and enhance environmental performance. Entrepreneurs acknowledged that green practices are the primary leading driver of environmental opportunities (Guo et al., 2020). Therefore, managerial environmental concern plays a signi cant role in addressing these environmental issues to foster GEO capabilities (Ebrahimi & Mirbargkar, 2017). Top management commitment continuously searches to support and spread green culture across rms' activities (Cao & Chen, 2019). Top managers should careful and focus on improving those activities that environmentally threaten GEO goals (Jiang et al., 2018). Van Doorn, Heyden, and Volberda (2017) argued that top managers struggle to facilitate GEO due to the fast uncertainty associated with dynamic environments. Hence, this study questions how top-managers able to improve GEO initiatives in a dynamic environment? So far, earlier studies show that rms still vary in their capacity to support GEO to address uncertainty in high dynamic environments (Jiang et al., 2018).
As such, there is a critical gap in our understanding of the role of the top manager's capabilities in fostering or impeding entrepreneurs' environmental opportunities. Top managers had a crucial impact on tracking and interpreting eco-opportunities (Van Doorn, Heyden, Tröster, & Volberda, 2015) and then adjusting the core focus of entrepreneurial strategies to t it (Van Doorn, Jansen, Van den Bosch, & Volberda, 2013). Empirical studies Saudi et al. (2019), and Tang et al. (2018) found that managers' environmental awareness is strongly associated with green practices. In an empirical study, Cao and Chen (2019) stated that top-managers' environmental awareness substantially impacts penetrating internal and external environmental impacts on green innovation practices. This means that the effect of MEC on environmental entrepreneurship exists and how this occurs still ambiguous. Given this critical matter, GEO engagement is more a matter of top-management about environmental concerns and strategic decision-making than a matter of best practices or speci ed business policy (Xue et al., 2019).
From the NRBV lens, we can nd evidence about the importance of environmental activities on the success of a rm's competitive advantages (Hart & Dowell, 2011). Thus, the following hypothesis is put forward: . Dynamic capability theory asserted that top managers are crucial for successful searching and capturing entrepreneurial opportunities (Teece, 2016). While the NRBV advocates that rms should harmonize their relationship with the external natural environment to avoid further eco-system destruction (Hart & Dowell, 2011). From these both lenses, it can be seen the great responsibility of top-management commitment. The primary task of managers' environmental awareness is to nd and solve those environmental activities (Jang, Zheng, & Bosselman, 2017), thus leading GEO readiness to capture eco-opportunities (Ebrahimi & Mirbargkar, 2017). It is far away to search for entrepreneurial opportunities if rm GEO cannot solve its environmental impacts. MEC is one of the leading green dynamic capabilities that enable entrepreneurs to capture green opportunities (Nordin & Hassan, 2019).
Besides, top managers regarded GIP as a severe issue that can foster business growth and protect against environmental degradation [12]. In turn, devote more considerable attention, time, and support to potentially strengthening the impact of green innovation on different environmental aspects (El-Kassar & Singh, 2019)-hence responding to business environmental changes. In this study, MEC is the cognitive awareness of managers on strengthening GEO activities by applying environmental innovation strategies to yield eco-friendly products that respond to ecological aspects. This study assumed that the more MEC involved in environmental innovation, the greater GEO could capture opportunities and ensure business survival and environmental performance. Prior studies (Saudi et al., 2019;Tang et al., 2018) found that MEC strengthens the relationship between green innovation and organizational and environmental performance. While addressing the direct impact of MEC on GEO is poorly ignored in the literature. Also, handling MEC's interaction impact-GEO on environmental performance and green innovation practicesstill exists. Thus, this study tends to estimate the increased interaction impact of MEC-GEO on enhancing green innovation capabilities and environmental performance from the managerial point of view. Therefore, it is postulated that: H2b: GEO mediates the relationship between managerial environmental concern and green innovation performance.
H2c: GEO mediates the relationship between managerial environmental concern and environmental performance.
Environmental cooperation (EC) and GEO The core focus of green entrepreneurship is ful lling the environmental requirements of the markets by supplying eco-friendly products and services to improve environmental performance (Guo et al., 2020).To alleviate these environmentally relevant markets, cooperation based environmental innovation (Weber & Heidenreich, 2018) is a crucial source to do so. In a high uncertainty environment, collaboration and interrelationships with external parties are more valuable and meaningful for acquiring knowledge, practices, skills, and techniques (Hájek & Stejskal, 2018;Van Beers & Zand, 2014). An empirical study by Higgins and Yarahmadi (2014) found that collaboration with external partners facilitates environmental innovation within production systems. Cooperation plays a signi cant role in establishing critical relationships (Wagner & Llerena, 2011). The core focus of this collaboration (Weber & Heidenreich, 2018) is developing a corporate green strategy to recon gure green technologies and then foster green products and processes that would result in exploring and exploiting more opportunities. Hence, collaboration based on environmental innovation strategy supports GEO by developing existing green practices and techniques (Kong et al., 2016). Probably this can lead to the creation of eco-friendly products for those particular environmental markets (Melander, 2017). From the NRBV, addressing environmental activities is the critical success of competitive advantages (Hart & Dowell, 2011) that managers and entrepreneurs . Hence, the next hypothesis is posited: H3a: Environmental cooperation positively in uences green entrepreneurship orientation.
In a high uncertainty environment, exploring and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities are quite tricky. Networks and interrelationships with external parties are among the primary sources to overcome these associated issues (Weber & Heidenreich, 2018). Establishing networks with universities, laboratories, consultants, stakeholders, and government agencies helps rms foster their green innovation capabilities (Higgins & Yarahmadi, 2014). Such environmental activities are high costs that need green funds, green subsidies, and tax facilities (Van Beers & Zand, 2014). Therefore, rms must create networks and search for green subsidies to support their green innovation activities (Bai, Song, Jiao, & Yang, 2019). This can enhance rms' green image, thereby leading to maintaining their competitive advantages (Zameer, Wang, & Yasmeen, 2020).
Consequently, lead to reduce environmental concerns and improve environmental performance (Kong et al., 2016). Collaboration-based environmental innovation addresses eco-friendly entrepreneurial opportunities, which leads to improved GEO proactively capabilities. A recent empirical study by Kong et al. (2016) in advanced manufacturing technologies found that green innovation (products and processes) is signi cantly in uenced by internal environmental cooperation. Whereas Albort-Morant et al.
(2018) assumed that strong interrelationships with external partners could strengthen GIP through assimilation and transfer of new knowledge into the production and managerial system. Since environmental cooperation emphasizes on developing and updating existing green dynamic capabilities to foster GIP to respond and address environmental opportunities (Weber & Heidenreich, 2018), entrepreneurs' decisions are highly associated with collaboration and meaningful because it pointed out eco-system sustainability.
An empirical study by Younis, Sundarakani, and Vel (2016) examined the effect of environmental cooperation on Korean electronics rms' nancial and non-nancial performance. In another study Perotti, Zorzini, Cagno, and Micheli (2012) addressed the impact of environmental collaboration and green supply chain initiatives on adopting green supply chain practices to improve rm performance. While Diabat, Khodaverdi, and Olfat (2013) investigated the effect of cooperation with suppliers, collaboration with customers, and green supply chain practice on different rm performance measures. However, entrepreneurship literature struggles to provide any evidence about EC's direct impact on GEO and EC-GEO's coupled impact on green innovation practices and environmental performance. Understanding how mechanism cooperation based on environmental concern between partners will foster GEO readiness is of utmost importance (Kobarg et al., 2020). To do so, this study lls an essential theoretical gap that emerged in the entrepreneurship literature. To what extent these networks and collaboration can alert entrepreneurial opportunities is still a new research endeavor. Lack of studies and inadequate understanding of the collaboration process support GEO lead to the debates about the GEO capacities in amelioration environmental markets. This study, therefore, tests the proposed hypotheses as outlined below: H3b: GEO mediates the relationship between environmental cooperation and green innovation performance.
H3c: GEO mediates the relationship between environmental cooperation and environmental performance.

GEO and green innovation performance
Environmental degradation is becoming a global concern for all stakeholders, policymakers, and peoples (Kasayanond, Umam, & Jermsittiparsert, 2019). Environmental entrepreneurship is the key driver in enhancing ecological sustainability by enabling green innovation practices to reduce environmental degradation (Song, Fisher, & Kwoh, 2019). GEO refers to a proactive strategic orientation that explores and tracks green business opportunities considering a holistic understanding of risks and bene ts (Jiang et al., 2018). GEO aims to respond to environmental degradation by producing and supplying eco-friendly products to enhance environmental performance (Nordin & Hassan, 2019). Responding to these concerns, GEO seeks to achieve the following (1) providing eco-friendly products, (2) reducing waste hazardous and CO2 emissions, (3) improving green workplace environment, (4) improving job satisfaction and green image. These can be achieved through facilitating and leveraging green practices In addition, GEO helps rms proactively and intentionally move toward green practices. Despite that, few studies [5,33] use GEO as an antecedent to study its association impacts on the GIP. To recoup for this imperfection, this study will attempt to address GEO's impact on GIP to improve environmental performance. Pursuing green business growth is becoming the primary goal of entrepreneurs to deal with eco-system requirements (Li, 2014). In this sense, developing green innovation has become an unavoidable choice for entrepreneurs to reduce carbon emissions (H. Sun, Edziah, Sun, & Kporsu, 2019), advance economic transformation mode, and enhance environmental performance (L.-y. Sun, Miao, & Yang, 2017). Supporting green innovation capabilities might impede the negative impacts of business activities on the environment (Borghesi, Cainelli, & Mazzanti, 2015). Recent manufacturers gave more attention to green innovation as a strategic solution to maintain the eco-system and increase organizational performance (L. M. Pacheco et al., 2018). It is critical, therefore, to determine the driving forces for rms to adopt green practices. Gast, Gundolf, and Cesinger (2017) argued that to yield green value-added, fostering GIP utmost the key strategic solution for the entrepreneurial ecosystem (Xue et al., 2019). To what extent GEO will promote GIP to achieve superior environmental performance and ensure business growth is crucial. Thus, the present study hypothesizes that: H4: GEO has a positive effect on green innovation performance. Similarly, in addition to the eco-system bene ts that drove by GEO, economic bene ts might be yielded by three channels, namely, (1)  suggested that GEO plays a crucial role in achieving better nancial performance and minimizing environmental impacts (Ullah & Qaiser Danish, 2020). GEO is a predisposition to pursue potential opportunities that produce economic and ecological bene ts by introducing eco-friendly products and services (Jiang et al., 2018). Although the core motivation and bene ts for green entrepreneurship (e.g., economic, environmental, and social value) have been addressed in previous research (Gast et al., 2017;Kirkwood & Walton, 2014), how GEO in uences environmental performance remains unclear. An understanding of the conditions under which GEO in uences EP is far from comprehensive. Teece (2014) argues that dynamic capabilities emphasize building and restructuring internal and external resources. This inclination facilitates tracking eco-friendly opportunities to yield green value-added. According to Teece, GEO is a new endeavor to promise new product processes (Woldesenbet et al., 2012). Notably, having entrepreneurs with a su cient green mindset, priorities would be given to reduce pollution production systems (Kong et al., 2016).
Consequently, toxic emissions and hazardous would be impeded, along with decreasing the use of water, electricity, and oil consumption by applying clean technologies (Triguero, Moreno-Mondéjar, & Davia, 2013). This emphasizes that GEO not only responding to environmental regulations but also ful lling societal, environmental concerns. In case the utilization of solar energy will mitigate environmental risk and human safety (Dangelico & Pujari, 2010). It is crucial to comprehensively uncover this topic, which helps rms determine green capabilities that must be applied within core activities to avoid environmental issues and ultimately support clean production systems and improve environmental performance. Based on these contentions, the next hypothesis is put forward: H5: GEO has a positive impact on environmental performance.

GIP and environmental performance
The NRBV lens suggested that rms should determine and emphasize those core activities that generate environmental issues (Hart & Dowell, 2011). This can be happening when rms focused on three distinct criteria, they are (1)  Recently, fast industrial advancement has extensively contributed to ecological problems and global warming (Jiang et al., 2018). As a result, businesses and governments are dealing with critical concerns to ensure future socioeconomic and ecologic (Tang et al., 2018). Therefore, GIP's strategic importance is directed to transform business processes into green business methods (Albino, Balice, & Dangelico, 2009). The following reasons stimulate the inspiration of entrepreneurs in acquiring a green label. First, it is based on the entrepreneur's personal preferences to apply eco-friendly practices responding to environmental concerns (Dangelico, 2015). Second, ful lling and responding to the increased customer environmental awareness toward the notion of customer-driven business ideology (Chang & Fong, 2010).
Third, proactive behavior corresponds to markets and government regulations to address business sustainability based on eco-system concerns (Wang, Liu, Hansson, Zhang, & Wang, 2011).
GIP involves rms' ability to combine green products and processes to create eco-friendly products with less energy use and a clean workplace environment (Chen, Lai, & Wen, 2006). Also, the green strategy is the practice that leads to improving the existing procedures that emphasize ecological concerns to deliver green value-added to the customers without any negative impact on eco-systems (Chen, 2008). Thus, green innovation support e ciency and responsiveness capabilities, adaptability capacity to customer preferences, societal and governmental legislation, which might result in a greater emphasis on environmental concerns (Xue et al., 2019). According to Chen et al. (2006), green innovations re ect the integration of clean technologies with green practices to ensure pollution prevention through reducing energy use and waste hazardous and their consequences on environmental performance. The extent to which green innovation bene cial for an organization is interpreted into the performance that can be achieved in several aspects. Accordingly, it is postulated that: Therefore, this study theoretically extends the body of knowledge of dynamic capability theory by emphasizing the development of dynamic capabilities in addressing environmental activities. By addressing these environmental issues, this study extends the body of the NRBV and provide further support about the importance of caring natural environment to achieve superior environmental performance (Hart & Dowell, 2011).
On the other hand, MEC help GEO to explore green opportunities and developing existing ones to suit environmental challenges by (1) addressing opportunities in those market failure, (2) collaboration based environmental innovation, (3) tracking and understanding customer environmental awareness, (4) restructuring business production systems, (5) reducing waste hazardous to provide green workplace environment. These tasks are the key expertise of managers to encourage GEO initiatives. Thus, this study assumes that the more MEC in uences GEO, the greater GEO can capture entrepreneurial opportunities. Accordingly, the subsequent hypotheses are posited: H7a: MEC has a positive in uence on environmental performance.
H7b: MEC moderates the relationship between green entrepreneurship orientation and environmental performance.
Based on the discussion, grounding on the natural resource-based view and dynamic capability theory, Fig. 1 illustrates the proposed theoretical framework that explains the core issue of environmental entrepreneurship, eco-innovation, and environmental performance.

Methodology
Sampling, respondents, and data collection This study concerns GEO, GIP, and EP among petroleum and petrochemical rms in China. Appropriate respondents are more important (managers of the production unit, managers of R&D, and managers of environmental protection, marketing managers, and CEO) to provide accurate data to ful ll the study's objectives and then clear demonstrating different relationships between factors of this research. Based on the list of 11140 petrochemical rms registered in the State Administration for Industry and Commerce of the People's Republic of China, this study applies a random sampling technique. Following Krejcie and Morgan (1970) formula, the sample size of this study was 370. As suggested by (Israel, 2003), actions were made to avoid any missing survey along with the low-response rate. Five-hundred eighteen respondents derived from a different department, which consists of middle-to upper-managerial executives in the petrochemical rms across China, were approached to complete the questionnaire.
A dual-language (English and Chinese version) of the questionnaire was sent, followed up by calls and emails, and a cover letter explaining the importance of this study's participation with the utmost con dentiality. Starting from March to July 2019, this study successfully collected 234 questionnaires while excluding eight responses due to incomplete answers representing a response rate of 43.6%. Table 1 details the background of respondents and rms. Respondents were mainly well-educated and had a long working experience, and attended several training programs to improve managerial and interpersonal skills provided by petrochemical rms. This descriptive result infers most rms with a long business operation in the petrochemical industry, acknowledged as China's primary strategic sources.

Measurement of variables
Ensuring the adequacy, clarity, smoothness of items understanding and distinguishing every group of items re ects only one particular variable among other research variables. In-depth content validity was conducted by inviting two experts to enrich the measurement items' content, followed by an interview with four professional experts in petrochemical rms in Guangdong provinces, China. Then, the output from academics and professional experts was carefully incorporated into the survey's nal draft. To this end, 16 companies are randomly selected and personally contacted managers to participate in a pilot study. The results showed that all variables' internal consistency and composite reliability ranged from 0.823 to 0.915, indicating a high-reliability coe cient. After that, the survey items are adjusted accordingly and then establishing a nal version, which translated into the Chinese language.
The measurement used to estimate this study's variables were adapted from past studies and adopted to the Chinese petrochemical industry context to t the study's objective. To measure green absorptive and structural model (Henseler, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2015). The rationale for the selection is that: (1) PLS-SEM allow the researcher to maximize the predictive precision of endogenous factors while maintaining more items for each factor, (2) the sample data of this study was not normal distribution (Chin, 1998) An independent samples t-test was checked to assess whether any possibility of non-response bias (the differences between early and late respondents that might share the same characteristics). The study found that Levene's test for equality of variance was higher than the 0.05 of all constructs, ful lling the signi cance level requirement based on (Pallant, 2011). Hence, suggesting that this study is free of non-  The discriminant validity was evaluated via the Fornell and Larcker criterion to assess the comparison of correlation between constructs with the square root of the AVE of the constructs. As shown in Table 3, the diagonals' bolded values were higher than the values in their respective row and column, thus indicating that the measures used in this study were discriminant. The cross-loading criterion was also assessed, and results showed that outer loading exceeded cross-loading for all constructs, and then results remained valid. Additionally, Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio developed by (Henseler et al., 2015) was also evaluated to check further that the model is well-examined. The values presented in parentheses in Table 3 is less than 0.85 and met the criterion of HTMT .85 (Kline et al., 2012), indicating that discriminant validity was achieved and the con dence interval does not show a value of 1 on any of the variables (Henseler et al., 2015), which means discriminant validity was con rmed. .774

Structural model
The structural path in Fig. 2 and Table 4 showed a positive and signi cant relationship between GAC and GEO (β1a = 0.438, t = 8.95, p < 0.000), indicating that H1a is supported. Next, the managerial environmental concern path was positive and statistically signi cant on GEO (β2a = 0.076, t = 1.79, p < 0.003), inferring that the hypothesis H2a is retained. Moreover, environmental cooperation has a positive and signi cant effect on GEO (β3a = 0.109, t = 2.31, p < 0.001), denoting that H3a is maintained.
Furthermore, the results showed that GEO was positively and signi cantly in uence GIP (β4 = 0.288, t = 5.89, p < 0.000) and EP (β5 = 0.343, t = 7.24, p < 0.000), respectively, signifying that H4 and H5 was supported. In addition, GIP has a signi cant and positive effect on EP (β6 = 0.234, t = 5.04, p < 0.001), which means H6 is supported. Additionally, the effect of managerial environmental concerns on EP (β7a = 0.337, t = 5.30, p < 0.000) was positive and signi cant. Hence, supporting 7a is upheld.  (Cohen, 1988). As tabulated in Table 4, GAC's effect size on GEO and GEO on EP was medium, whereas all other constructs show a small effect size. Moreover, all these constructs are contributing and explaining the high-value variance of R 2 of 26.4% on green entrepreneurship orientation, GIP (R 2 = 14.6%), and EP (R 2 = 47.8%), suggesting that the most reliable relationship with all dependent variables (see Table 8). The study also examined the effect of a rm's age (years of operation) and their size (number of employees) as control variables. Results shows rm size (β = − 0.147, t = 3.04, p > 0.05), and rm's age (β = − 0.117, t = 1.69, p < 0.10) were statistically signi cant on environmental performance. Both control variables signi cantly impact EP, indicating that these rms acquire enough experiences and resources to support environmental innovation initiatives.
Testing mediation effect GEO's mediation effect between GAC, EC, and MEC on GIP and EP was assessed by using (Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008)'s approach and using the bootstrapping procedure to test the indirect effect as suggested in the literature. The result presented in Table 5 shows that GAC's indirect effect on GIP has a beta value of 0.126 and t-value of 4.29, respectively. As recommended by (Hair, Ringle, & Sarstedt, 2013), the variance accounted for (VAF) that determines the indirect effect size in relation to the total effect was calculated. In this study, the VAF = direct effect/total effect has a value of 0.126/0.438 = 0.287, indicating that 28.7% of GAC effect on GIP is explained via the existence of the mediation effect of GEO. Since the VAF is greater than 20% but less than 80%, inferring that GEO partially mediates this relationship, hence H1b is supported. Moreover, the indirect effect of GAC on EP has B = 0.15, t = 4.81, respectively. Hence, the VAF = 0.15/0.438 = 0.342, deducing that GEO's mediation effect explains 34.2% of the GAC effect on EP.
Thus, this relationship is partially mediated, hence retaining H1c. Table 5 Indirect effects in the mediation model.

Relationship
Beta t-value p-Value Con dence Interval Decision 5% 95% performance has occurred in the existence of the mediation effect of GEO. Thereby H3c is maintained (see Table 5 and Table 6). Note: GAC, green absorptive capacity; MEC, managerial environmental concern; EC, environmental cooperation; GIP, green innovation performance; GEO, green entrepreneurship orientation; EP, environmental performance.

Testing the moderation effect
To test MEC's moderation effect on the relationship between GEO and EP, the study applied a product indicator approach by (Henseler & Fassott, 2010) to assess the strength of the moderation effect of MEC. Table 7 details that the positive interaction between MEC and GEO (β = 0.095, t = 2.08, p < 0.001); was statistically signi cant, conjecturing that MEC strengthens the relationship between GEO and EP. Hence H7c is supported.  The structural model's predictive relevance (Q2) is examined via the blindfolding procedures by (Geisser, 1975). When the Q 2 values are greater than zero, it predicts that the model is relevant, and when the Q2 values are near to 1, it indicates the greater the model is appropriate (Chin, 1998). Reading in Table 8 shows the Q 2 values for GEO, GIP, and EP were 0.335, 0.124, and 0.528, respectively. The result conjectures that the connectedness among these exogenous constructs (i.e., GEO, GIP, and EP) are more  Table 8 are substantial for both GEO and EP and moderates GIP.  The ndings of the study indicated that GAC had a positive and signi cant impact on GEO. This means that GAC facilitates GEO activities and helps to determine and capture eco-business opportunities. From the NRBV lens, GEO can be seen as dynamic capability and tacit resources aiming to catch entrepreneurial opportunities in line with responding to environmental responsibilities (Hart & Dowell, 2011). GAC activities fall within the core strategies of GEO. Thus, the interaction impact would be high (Engelen et al., 2014). Several studies (Patel,  Managerial environmental concern mainly focused on exploiting those environmental activities and facilities to leverage GEO initiatives, which led to enhanced green practices and improved environmental performance. The natural resource-based view advocates that rms must respond to the external natural environment. Their environmental strategies must stand on three distinct criteria: addressing environmental activities to reduce pollution, product stewardship, and sustainable development (Hart & Dowell, 2011;Rehman et al., 2020). Following this lens, it can be seen the practices and skills that must be acquired by managers in addressing environmental concerns.

Discussion
This study provides signi cant evidence by testing the theory and providing further support in the light of the entrepreneurial perspective about the need to explore external environmental activities. This nding is essential for entrepreneurs and management practices. This evidence demonstrates the importance of collaboration based on shared bene ts that consider socioeconomic and ecological issues a primary concern. GEO seeking to extend businesses and respond to environmental problems must establish valuable networks with external parties to develop innovation capabilities that cover ecosystems issues more particular (Hájek & Stejskal, 2018). Entrepreneurship collaboration based on environmental aspects such as governmental (regulations and tax preferences), private and public laboratories (R&D to extend knowledge and practices), inter-organizational collaboration (suppliers of green raw materials, clean technologies, eco-friendly products techniques, and processes) considered as the driving force of GEO to improve GIP and environmental performance (Higgins & Yarahmadi, 2014 Pacheco et al., 2018). The more interaction between GAC activities in GEO, the more signi cant the improvement in eco-friendly products, eco-system sustainability, and green business growth. This study found that GAC, directly and indirectly, in uences GEO, GIP, and EP, which means that GEO is encouraged by GAC's existence effect. It then successfully able to capture green opportunities, responsiveness exibility to environmental restrictions and customer environmental awareness. Thus, leading rms to achieve superior environmental performance.
The natural resource-based view suggests that rms must consider three distinct environmental strategies to achieve competitive environmental advantages (ECA) (Hart, 1995;Hart & Dowell, 2011).
These advantages can be achieved when GEO is engaged in environmental activities to respond to the external natural environment . Managerial environmental concern and environmental cooperation aimed at improving environmental activities and responsibilities of enhancing green innovation capabilities. This can be led to foster GEO alertness to explore eco-business opportunities and improve environmental performance. Managers and entrepreneurs are advised to focus on environmental networks and improving organizational environmental awareness responding to tackle those activities that yielded environmental impacts.
Theoretical implications and the novelty of the study This is the rst empirical research that applied and responds to the NRBV lens by incorporating three distinct environmental strategies in understanding the interrelated impacts of the GEO, GIP, and EP in a single model. The DCT asserted that GEO is a proactive strategic decision to ensure the equilibrium between restrictions and opportunities in a dynamic environment (Teece, 2016). In contrast, GEO's primary responsibility is to improve environmental performance while continuously searching for ecoopportunities (Jiang et al., 2018). In contrast, the NRBV suggests that rms seeking to ensure competitive advantages must incorporate environmental strategies into their overall business strategy. The study argued that GEO is a dynamic capability that responds to the external natural environment while continuously addressing environmental opportunities. This research extends the body of knowledge of entrepreneurship and eco-innovation literature from the NRBV lens. Also, the study expands the NRBV lens by testing the theory in the body of entrepreneurship studies. This study addresses the strategic impact of environmental cooperation and managers' environmental awareness to foster green practices and environmental performance. Besides, this study also established the rst theoretical model that addresses three distinct drivers of environmental strategies in a single model that were previously has been ignored. In doing so, this study's ndings support the NRBV and extend the body of DCT by demonstrating the critical impact of the interrelationships highlighted in the research model under the umbrella of the NRBV.

Practical implications
Firms that seek to sustain competitive advantages, especially those advantages that addressed environmental aspects, are more critical for individuals, markets, and government. The study's ndings suggest that GEO must respond to the natural environment and responsible for environmental activities. Besides, to achieve superior environmental performance, rm GEO and managers must apply environmental strategies that emphasize three main complement strategies: reducing pollution, controlling eco-products, and ensuring sustainable development by minimizing energy use and waste.
Furthermore, to track market green opportunities, rms should consider environmental problems as suggested by the NRBV. Given the strategic impact of absorptive capacity, managerial concerns, and environmental cooperation on GEO, GIP, and EP, it is essential for rms to comprehensively explore the implications of the nding provided by this study. Firms should track eco-friendly opportunities and exploit the existence of environmental opportunities enabled by GAC. GAC is the process of newly leveraging green practices responding to the external environment and GEO initiatives.
Moreover, networks and inter-organizational cooperation tends to be crucial to foster and facilitate environmental activities. Collaboration with partners helps to improve green practices and empower green organizational culture. Additionally, increased environmental awareness refers to managers' responsibilities to facilitate GEO strategies to achieve entrepreneurial eco-opportunities.

Direction for future research
This study focused on a single industry in China. Other industries operate under different regulations, political ties, and facilities. Thus, future research suggested expanding sampling beyond this context to have more generalized research ndings. Besides, this study emphasizes a single industry as one of the major contributors to environmental problems. However, other industries have a considerable ecological impact, which subsequent motivating studies.
Additionally, this present research recommended that a longitudinal study be executed by tracking GEO, GIP, and EP's improvement progress across time. Besides, by conducting longitudinal analysis, the ndings would provide substantial evidence about the relevance of the NRBV. Further, more empirical studies should explore the impact of individual, organizational, and institutional factors on GEO, GIP, and EP. Examining GEO and GIP's green workplace environment is vital since no published research has investigated this close link. It assumed it is one of the main driving forces for successfully deploying green practices among employees. Besides, applying this model within other contexts helps discover other factors associated with green innovation practices, GEO, and EP.