Promoting employee green behavior in the Chinese and Vietnamese hospitality contexts: The roles of green human resource management practices and responsible leadership

Abstract

Employee green behavior contributes to achieving sustainability goals of hospitality organizations. Accordingly, there is a need to investigate how sustainable practices, such as green human resource management (HRM) practices, foster employee green behavior. Our study hence seeks to unfold whether responsible leadership and hospitality employees’ felt responsibility for the environment serve as a two-stage mediation mechanism for the link between green HRM practices and hospitality employees’ organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE). The data were collected from 392 employees and 84 supervisors from the Chinese hospitality context, and from 537 employees and 109 supervisors from the Vietnamese hospitality context. The findings revealed that, in both Chinese and Vietnamese samples, the effect of green HRM practices on hospitality employees’ OCBE was mediated by a two-stage mediation of responsible leadership and employees’ felt responsibility for the environment. HRM system strength served as a moderator to strengthen the association of green HRM practices with responsible leadership. From these findings, this study presents implications for scholars and practitioners in the hospitality discipline.