Zhang Yihua, Liu Xiyao, Zhang Xiaoyan
Graduate School of Education and Psychology, Pepperdine University, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China.
Front Psychol. 2023 Jan 9;13:1086504. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1086504. eCollection 2022.
In recent years, environmental problems such as global warming, rising sea levels, and species extinction have provoked a widespread concern all over the world, and many countries and international organizations have called for a reduction in carbon emissions. Theoretically, although many scholars have explored how responsible leadership influences subordinates' work-related outcomes, little studies have examined the association between responsible leadership and employees' low-carbon behavior. Therefore, to address this literature gap, we here drawing upon social cognitive theory developed a dual-mediation model to investigate how responsible leadership impacts employees' low-carbon behavior, and through which mechanisms this impact may occur.
By conducting a questionnaire survey in a company in China, we collected the valid data from 411 samples. Then using SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.1, we tested our proposed theoretical model and hypotheses by analyzing these data.
The empirical results showed that responsible leadership was positively related to employees' environmental consciousness, which can further increase their low-carbon behavior. At the same time, responsible leadership was negatively related to employees' environmental apathy, which can reduce their low-carbon behavior. And employees' environmental consciousness and environmental apathy played the mediating roles in the relationship between responsible leadership and employees' low-carbon behavior. Furthermore, we found that leader-member exchange (LMX) magnified the direct effect of responsible leadership on employees' environmental apathy and strengthened the indirect effect of responsible leadership on employees' low-carbon behavior via environmental apathy, but the moderating effect of LMX on another path was not significant.
These findings suggest that despite encouraging leaders to show responsible behaviors, promoting employees' environmental consciousness and reducing their environmental apathy may be useful ways to facilitating their low-carbon behavior and achieving a low-carbon society. Moreover, establishing a high-quality of exchange relationship with followers may magnify the effectiveness of responsible leadership on lowering followers' environmental apathy.
近年来，全球变暖、海平面上升和物种灭绝等环境问题引发了全球广泛关注，许多国家和国际组织呼吁减少碳排放。从理论上讲，尽管许多学者探讨了负责任领导如何影响下属的工作相关成果，但很少有研究考察负责任领导与员工低碳行为之间的关联。因此，为了填补这一文献空白，我们在此借鉴社会认知理论，构建了一个双重中介模型，以研究负责任领导如何影响员工的低碳行为，以及这种影响可能通过哪些机制发生。
通过对中国一家公司进行问卷调查，我们收集了来自411个样本的有效数据。然后使用SPSS 26.0和Mplus 8.1，通过分析这些数据来检验我们提出的理论模型和假设。
实证结果表明，负责任领导与员工的环境意识呈正相关，这可以进一步提高他们的低碳行为。同时，负责任领导与员工的环境冷漠呈负相关，这可以减少他们的低碳行为。员工的环境意识和环境冷漠在负责任领导与员工低碳行为之间的关系中起中介作用。此外，我们发现领导-成员交换（LMX）放大了负责任领导对员工环境冷漠的直接影响，并加强了负责任领导通过环境冷漠对员工低碳行为的间接影响，但LMX对另一条路径的调节作用不显著。
这些发现表明，尽管鼓励领导者表现出负责任的行为，但提高员工的环境意识和减少他们的环境冷漠可能是促进他们的低碳行为和实现低碳社会的有效途径。此外，与下属建立高质量的交换关系可能会放大负责任领导在降低下属环境冷漠方面的有效性。
