How Green Participative Leadership Drives pro-environmental Behavior: A Conservation of Resources Theory Perspective

This study examines how green participative leadership (GPL) fosters employees’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB) through green work engagement (GWE). It also explores how environmental passion (EP) and green management initiatives (GMI) moderate these relationships to offer a comprehensive understanding of green behavior in organizations. Grounded in conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study develops and tests a moderated mediation model. A time-lagged survey was conducted with employees in environmentally intensive sectors. Structural equation modeling was used to assess the hypothesized relationships. The results demonstrate that GPL significantly enhances both GWE and PEB. GWE plays a mediating role, linking leadership to environmentally responsible behavior. Moreover, EP strengthens the link between GPL and GWE, while GMI increase the impact of engagement on PEB. Organizations aiming to promote sustainability should adopt participative leadership practices with a green focus. Strengthening employees’ EP and institutionalizing GMI can further boost engagement and ecological behavior. This study contributes to the green organizational behavior literature by presenting an integrative model that incorporates both psychological and contextual mechanisms. It provides empirical evidence on the pathways through which GPL influences PEB, highlighting the roles of GWE, EP, and GMI. The findings offer new insights for research in green human resource management and sustainable leadership, especially within the hospitality industry in China.