How Supplier Trust Enhances Environmental Sustainability: A Moderated Mediation Model of Green Supply Chain Integration and Information Sharing

Abstract

Environmental sustainability has become a strategic imperative for firms operating in resource-constrained emerging markets facing increasing regulatory scrutiny, supply chain risks, and stakeholder pressure. This study examines how supplier trust influences environmental sustainability performance in Pakistan’s pharmaceutical sector through a moderated mediation model, with green supply chain integration (GSCI) as a mediator and information sharing as a moderator. Drawing on signaling theory, we argue that supplier trust acts as a credible relational signal that reduces uncertainty and enables deeper green integration, thereby improving environmental sustainability outcomes. Data were collected through survey from 250 supply chain professionals and analyzed by using PROCESS Model 7 with 5,000 bootstrap resamples in SPSS. The findings show that supplier trust positively affects GSCI, which in turn enhances environmental sustainability performance. Information sharing further strengthens the indirect relationship between supplier trust and environmental sustainability through GSCI, with conditional indirect effects strongest at high levels of information sharing, providing evidence of moderated mediation. These results underscore the importance of trust-based supplier relationships and transparent information exchange in enabling effective green supply chain integration. Managerially, the study highlights fostering trustworthy partnerships and investing in information-sharing systems to support environmental initiatives. Theoretically, the research extends signaling theory by demonstrating how relational signals shape environmental sustainability performance.