Family SMEs as enablers or barriers to climate neutrality: A multi-level perspective on transformational management
- 1Department of Business Finance, Faculty of Business Management, Bratislava University of Economics and Business, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
- 2Department of Management, Faculty of Business Management, Bratislava University of Economics and Business, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
- 3Department of Tourism, Faculty of Commerce, Bratislava University of Economics and Business, Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Abstract
Background: Family firms are the dominant ownership form among European SMEs, and socioemotional wealth theory predicts their environmental behaviour in opposing directions: long-term orientation favours stewardship, capital-commitment aversion favours retrenchment. Because firm-level ownership data linked to environmental outcomes do not exist at European scale, this literature substitutes the small-firm share of a sector for the family ownership its theory concerns. We ask whether that substitution is defensible. Study design/methodology/approach: We test four hypotheses on 3,352 sector–country–year observations, twelve sectors in twenty EU member states, 2009–2023. The dependent variable is the annual decarbonisation rate: the negative first difference of log greenhouse gas intensity per unit of value added. Data come from Eurostat air emissions accounts, business statistics, environmental tax accounts and business demography, and from ECB interest rate statistics. Models use additive country, sector and year fixed effects, with errors clustered by country–sector. Findings/conclusions: No hypothesis is supported. The coefficient on SME concentration is negative throughout but insignificant (β1 = −0.034, p = 0.104), and the null is informative rather than inconclusive: the confidence interval [−0.074, + 0.007] excludes positive associations of consequence. Moderation by financing costs, tax exposure and enterprise maturity does not reach five per cent (p = 0.090, 0.690, 0.053). One association is robust: sectors starting from higher intensity decarbonise faster (β2 = +0.021, p < 0.001). A second, on tax exposure, proves an artefact of tax-base composition and of a shared denominator. Limitations/future research: Sectoral SME concentration is not a usable proxy for family-firm environmental behaviour: 58.7 per cent of its variance is sector membership, and correcting for measurement error leaves the estimate unchanged. We read this as evidence about the limits of ecological inference in family business research, not as a refutation of the theory. Progress requires linking ownership registers to environmental records.
Related
- Fluctuation-induced magnetoresistance in graphene Hall bars at charge neutrality
- Barriers to dequantization of near-term molecular electronic structure methods
- On quantum confinement without barriers
- Model-fitting perspective on the robustness and speed of CLASS in reflection matrix microscopy
- Breaking the quantum barriers for Graph Collision
BibTeX
@article{vavrova2026family,
title = {{Family SMEs as enablers or barriers to climate neutrality: A multi-level perspective on transformational management}},
author = {Katarina Vavrová and Alexander Šarlina and Roman Lacko and Zuzana Hajduová},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0351581},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0351581},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Family SMEs as enablers or barriers to climate neutrality: A multi-level perspective on transformational management
AU - Katarina Vavrová
AU - Alexander Šarlina
AU - Roman Lacko
AU - Zuzana Hajduová
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/14
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0351581
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0351581
AB - Background: Family firms are the dominant ownership form among European SMEs, and socioemotional wealth theory predicts their environmental behaviour in opposing directions: long-term orientation favours stewardship, capital-commitment aversion favours retrenchment. Because firm-level ownership data linked to environmental outcomes do not exist at European scale, this literature substitutes the small-firm share of a sector for the family ownership its theory concerns. We ask whether that substitution is defensible. Study design/methodology/approach: We test four hypotheses on 3,352 sector–country–year observations, twelve sectors in twenty EU member states, 2009–2023. The dependent variable is the annual decarbonisation rate: the negative first difference of log greenhouse gas intensity per unit of value added. Data come from Eurostat air emissions accounts, business statistics, environmental tax accounts and business demography, and from ECB interest rate statistics. Models use additive country, sector and year fixed effects, with errors clustered by country–sector. Findings/conclusions: No hypothesis is supported. The coefficient on SME concentration is negative throughout but insignificant (β1 = −0.034, p = 0.104), and the null is informative rather than inconclusive: the confidence interval [−0.074, + 0.007] excludes positive associations of consequence. Moderation by financing costs, tax exposure and enterprise maturity does not reach five per cent (p = 0.090, 0.690, 0.053). One association is robust: sectors starting from higher intensity decarbonise faster (β2 = +0.021, p < 0.001). A second, on tax exposure, proves an artefact of tax-base composition and of a shared denominator. Limitations/future research: Sectoral SME concentration is not a usable proxy for family-firm environmental behaviour: 58.7 per cent of its variance is sector membership, and correcting for measurement error leaves the estimate unchanged. We read this as evidence about the limits of ecological inference in family business research, not as a refutation of the theory. Progress requires linking ownership registers to environmental records.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -