How Does Servant Leadership Foster Employees’ Voluntary Green Behavior? A Sequential Mediation Model

Abstract

Employees’ voluntary green behavior (EVGB) is indispensable in realizing organizations’ environmental sustainability objectives. Leaders can act as catalysts to shape the behavior of their employees. On EVGB, noticeably the missing link is investigating the influence of servant leadership and the mechanism through which it operates. Building upon self-determination and psychological empowerment theories, this research examined the impact of servant leadership on EVGB through the simple and sequential mediation of psychological empowerment and autonomous motivation for the environment (AME). Through systematic sampling, dyadic data were collected from 315 pairs of subordinates and supervisors working in the power sector organizations of Pakistan. Results were obtained by employing the partial least squares structural modeling (PLS-SEM) technique with Smart-PLS 3.2.8 software. Findings revealed that psychological empowerment and AME simply and sequentially mediate the influence of servant leadership on EVGB. Implications for theory and organizational practitioners are offered, accompanied by suggestions for future research.