One of the controversial issues in the new world is climate change and environmental challenges in supply chain systems. Managers are trying to achieve green supply chain (GSC) by developing sustainable practices in supplier’s participation. There is now a well-recognized need for achieving overall sustainability in industrial activities. The main goal of this paper is doing an empirical survey to achieve a better understanding of the drivers for the participation of suppliers in green supply chain initiatives. We selected four independent variables that are customer requirement, supplier readiness, relational norms and customer investment in a supplier system. Malaysian automotive industry was selected as a case of study. Final result showed that customer requirements will have a direct effect on supplier participation (H1). Moreover, it shown that there is a positive and important relationship between supplier readiness and supplier participation. In addition, our findings confirmed the hypothesis that there is not a significant relationship between relational norms and supplier participation. Finally, we found that there is not significant support in our data sample for Supplier development investment.