This study aims to investigate inter-firm practises of firms operating in Saudi automotive industry – a sector that faces copious sustainable challenges – to explain how businesses respond to global climate change regulations in emerging markets. This study adopts a network approach as an intellectual lens and behavioural concepts to explain the underpinning mechanisms of firms’ responses to climate change regulations. Through interviews with senior managers and policy-makers of Saudi automobile networks, our findings distinguish between swift and delayed corporate responses to the country’s climate change framework. Specifically, we demonstrate that behavioural biases at the network level hinder the swift response. Loss aversion, present bias and focal point are the cognitive biases and errors that underpin actors’ interactions leading to delayed response. Our study advances extant knowledge by demonstrating that business responses to new environmental regulations are contingent on the network actors’ practices and the inter-firm interactions within the global supply networks.