Green Transformational Leadership and Workplace Pro-Environmental Behavior in Hotels: The Mediating Role of Green Organizational Support

Abstract

One of the growing needs of the hotel industry in this respect is environmental sustainability, which nowadays is heavily reliant on pro-environmental behavior (WPEB) in the everyday workplace of employees, but most hotels fail to translate sustainability intentions into operational-level and regular action. Using the Organizational Support Theory and Social Identity Theory as the theoretical backgrounds, the proposed study focuses on determining whether Green Transformational Leadership (GTL) positively impacts the WPEB of hotels employees and whether a relationship between Green Organizational Support (GOS) and the Green Transformational Leadership (GTL) has any mediating effects in the context of Pakistan hotel industry. The survey design used was quantitative and cross sectional and the sample data were obtained among the employees of three-, four-, and five- star hotels in Pakistan. The measurement model based on PLS-SEM (SmartPLS) was found to be acceptable in both the reliability and validity. The results of the structural model suggested that GTL was a positive predictor of GOS and WPEB and GOS is a positive predictor of WPEB. In addition, GOS plays a major role of mediating the GTL-WPEB relationship which means that green leadership has a direct and indirect effect on employees by encouraging pro-environmental behavior as it reinforces the perception of employees regarding organizational support of environmental initiatives. The results are useful to hotel managers as they highlight the importance of green supporting transformational leadership and any visible organizational support systems (e.g., green training, green resources, green recognition) in institutionalizing WPEB and achieve better sustainability results in service-intensive environments.