How Does Employee Green Behavior Impact Employee Well-Being? An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The issue of environmental protection and sustainable development is a key research focus across multiple fields. Employee green behavior is considered to be an important micro-activity to address this. Researchers in the field of organizational behavior and sustainable development have been focusing on the influencing factors of employee green behavior. However, few have explored the beneficial effects of employee green behavior on behavioral implementers. The objective of this study is to investigate the relationships among employee green behavior, self-esteem, perceived organizational support for employee environmental efforts, and employee well-being, and to explore a new dimension of employee green behavior. We empirically examined the underlying framework by conducting two surveys to collect data from 900 employees working in manufacturing, construction, and the service industry in China. We performed multilevel path analysis using SPSS and AMOS software, and confirmed that employee green behavior includes four dimensions: green learning, individual practice, influencing others, and organizational voices. Further, employee green behavior has a significant positive impact on self-esteem, which in turn is converted into employee well-being. Finally, perceived organizational support for employee environmental efforts not only positively moderated the relationship between employee green behavior and self-esteem, but was also confirmed as a moderated mediation model. This study enriches the current literature on the measurement framework and variables of employee green behavior.

Make it their Decisions, not your Directives: Exploring Required Green Competencies for Employee Ecological Behaviour

“…Employee ecological behaviour (EEB) encompasses various activities, including recycling (e.g., reusing paper, plastic, glass, and containers), water conservation (e.g., limited water usage when showering or washing hands), electricity conservation (e.g., switching off lights when not used), reusing (e.g., disposable cups), taking public transportation, cycling, walking, correctly disposing of non-recyclable waste, utilising lesser paper when printing (e.g., double-sided printing), and purchasing or using green products (Bissing-Olson et al, 2016). Adopting EEB can bring numerous benefits, such as environmental performance (Anwar et al, 2020), social sustainability (Amrutha & Geetha, 2020), job satisfaction (Kim et al, 2019b), employee task performance (He et al, 2020), self-esteem and well-being (Zhang et al, 2021).…”

Exploring Challenges and Solutions in Performing Employee Ecological Behaviour for a Sustainable Workplace

“…According to environmental protection, the pressure to act according to environmental protection urges companies to implement ecological behaviour extensively in organisational work processes [4]. Scholarly studies on workplace ecological behaviours is an emerging research area [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Psychologists, scientists, and researchers phrase this behaviour similarly with terms such as "green behaviour", "sustainability behaviour", "pro-environmental behaviour", and "ecological behaviour", but all these terms highlight decreasing the implications inflicted by humans on the environment [12].…”

“…Conversely, numerous studies emphasised the outcome where EEB was found to significantly impact environmental performance [34], job satisfaction [35], intentions to implement green practices [36], sustainability [37], employee task performance [14], and employee self-esteem and well-being [8]. Nevertheless, barriers in applying EEB have posed a challenge to organisations' management [38].…”

How and when does responsible leadership affect employees’ pro-environmental behavior?

“…Tepper et al (2018) indicate that the process of leader-employee interaction can be seen as a process in which leaders provide resources to employees. From the perspective of resource accumulation, responsible leaders can provide resources to employees, including personal characteristics resources, conditional resources, relationship resources and so on (Hobfoll, 2002), and employees will strive to maintain these resources and take positive actions to achieve future resource appreciation, and EPB is one of the behaviors that employee adopts to realize resource appreciation, which helps to enhance employee well-being and long-term development in the organization (Zhang B. et al, 2021). Firstly, in terms of personal characteristics resources, responsible leaders consider the affected stakeholders before making business decisions, accommodate different views of various stakeholders inside and outside the organization to seek balanced decisions, and solve 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1079720 problems through consulting; they take more responsibility for work, are highly competent with good moral standards.…”