Investigating the Impact of Green Supply Chain and Environmental Performance on Foreign Trade Performance among Small and Medium Businesses

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of green supply chain on foreign trade performance with regard to the mediating role of environmental performance among small and medium businesses active in the field of cellulose industries in industrial areas of Golestan province. This research is descriptive-survey research in terms of method, and is correlation in terms of how to collect information and is applied in terms of purpose. In this research, a questionnaire was used to collect data. The reliability coefficient for the questionnaires used had the required reliability. The statistical population of this study consists of all managers and supervisors working in small and medium businesses active in the field of cellulose industries in industrial areas of Golestan province, whose number was170 people during the study period. A total of 125 people were considered as the study samples that were selected using purposive sampling method. According to the results of KMO and Bartlett tests, the research data is sufficient and for this reason, to analyze the research hypotheses, factor analysis technique and structural equation model test were used and PLS software was used. Findings show that green supply chain has a significant effect on foreign trade performance and environmental performance; environmental performance has a significant effect on foreign trade performance. The results also showed that the mediating role of environmental performance is played between the studied relationships.