From External Stakeholder Pressure to Sustainable Practice in HEIs: Mechanisms and Internal Mediating Factors

Sustainable procurement is an important part of sustainable development in HEIs, playing a pivotal role in optimizing resource allocation, fulfilling social responsibilities, and promoting green development. However, existing research has paid insufficient attention to the impact of external stakeholder pressure on HEIs’ sustainable procurement and its intrinsic action mechanism. To address this gap, this study aims to explore the influence path of external stakeholder pressure on HEIs’ sustainable procurement and identify key mediating factors. This study collected 260 valid data points from Chinese higher education institutions with more than one year of purchasing experience through snowball sampling. PLS-SEM analysis results show that external stakeholder pressure not only directly promotes sustainable procurement but also exerts an indirect effect through two mediating paths: affective commitment and professional knowledge. The mediating role of affective commitment is stronger than that of knowledge, and affective commitment itself has the strongest direct impact on sustainable procurement among all variables. Theoretically, this study enriches the application scenarios of stakeholder theory and institutional theory in the field of higher education sustainable management. Practically, it provides actionable references for HEIs to enhance sustainable procurement performance by strengthening external stakeholder collaboration, optimizing knowledge management systems, and fostering employees’ affective commitment.