Issues of climate change and global warming have been discussed over and over again. Governments and other organizations throughout the international community have been trying to find ways to motivate people to be concerned about environmental sustainability. Carbon trading, as one of the mechanisms to finance the emission reduction, is an incentive for those who can reduce their emission below the agreed-upon level, and paid by those who can’t meet the required level of reduction.
This study proposes the determinants of the action in Taiwanese companies in the 21st century to reduce emission through the mediation effect of awareness of the need to reduce emission and motivation to reduce emission, and with capability to reduce emission as moderator to affect the relationship toward their real action, given two antecedents. The first is their knowledge of global warming and the second is their knowledge of carbon trading. The primary finding reveals that awareness and motivation are important to mediate the relationship between antecedent and action.
Although the Taiwanese companies surveyed might have awareness, motivation, and capability (AMC) to reduce emission, it does not mean they will put it into action, as they might be skeptical that reducing emissions needs expensive technology and brings more disadvantages for them. The finding of this research, however, is that capability to reduce emission does not alter the effectiveness of both awareness and motivation to have higher real action taken for reducing emission.

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