Fostering Employees’ Voluntary Green Behavior: The Role of Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership, Positive Affectivity, and Workplace Anxiety

Liyan Yang, Xiaojing Shao () and Yuan Jiang
Additional contact information
Liyan Yang: College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 1954 Huashan Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200240, China
Xiaojing Shao: School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, 92 Xidazhi Street, Nangang District, Harbin 150001, China
Yuan Jiang: China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), 699 Hongfeng Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai 201203, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 20, 1-17

Abstract: The recent introduction of servant leadership into the research on pro-environmental behavior in organizations has stimulated interest and concern among scholars on how an environmentally specific servant leader fosters their subordinates’ green behavior. Drawing from affective event theory, this study focuses on the underlying affective mechanism linking environmentally specific servant leadership and employee voluntary green behavior. Using two-wave data from 190 employees in two organizations, we found that environmentally specific servant leadership was indirectly related to employee voluntary green behavior via positive affectivity. Moreover, workplace anxiety moderated the indirect effect, such that it was only significant and positive under low levels of workplace anxiety. Overall, our study sheds light on the role the effect plays in unpacking the influence of environmentally specific servant leadership on employee voluntary green behavior.

Keywords: employee green behavior; environmentally specific servant leadership; positive affectivity; workplace anxiety; affective event theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/20/14883/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/20/14883/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:20:p:14883-:d:1260052

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().