Using behavioral and stakeholder theories, we suggest that family firms may have family-centered non-economic goals and that these goals could influence firm behaviors. This study extends the literature by hypothesizing that the essence of family influence partially mediates the relationship between family involvement and family firms' adoption of family-centered non-economic goals. The results using 1,060 small firms support the hypotheses. Aside from contributing to family business theory by explaining and testing mediating variables as sources of goal heterogeneity among family firms, our findings also imply that the involvement and essence approaches to defining family businesses may be hierarchically reconciled.