On What Could Chinese Mining Enterprises Achieve High-Level Environmental Performance?—Based on the fsQCA Method

Enterprise environmental performance has causal complexity. The purpose of this paper is to discover the possible combination of conditions for enterprises to achieve high environmental performance. Based on the resource dependence theory, stakeholder theory, and externality theory, this paper constructs the theoretical framework of enterprise environmental performance evaluation and applies the fsQCA method to study the major influencing factors and mechanism of the environmental performance of listed enterprises in the Chinese mining industry. Based on the data from 2016 to 2019, the results show that there are four configurations of multiple factors leading to high environmental performance. Based on these configurations, three possible paths, internally driven, internally–externally driven, and externally driven, are established to improve environmental performance. Further, we also find that, between profitability and government regulation and between enterprise size and board independence are interchangeable condition variables; public attention outweighs other factors for Chinese mining enterprises. Countermeasures and suggestions from perspectives of government supervision, public concern, and enterprise internal governance are proposed at the end the study.