The Effects of Leadership and Reward Policy on Employees' Electricity Saving Behaviors: An Empirical Study in China.

Zhenjiao Chen,Yaqing Liu

doi:10.3390/ijerph17062019

Abstract

Excessive energy consumption and carbon emission damages the ecological environment and socially sustainable development in China. Organizations are major energy consumers, and should be principally responsible for energy saving. Despite that many organizational leaders know it is urgent to manage the energy saving behavior of employees, “how to effectively manage” receives less attention in both academic and practical fields. To fill this gap, this study adapts charismatic leadership theory to develop a theoretical model and explores how organizational leaders manage the electricity saving behavior of employees. This model was tested with a survey of 627 full-time employees from 14 provinces and municipalities of China. Results show that sustainable development vision, electricity saving cues, inspiration and role modeling significantly increase the electricity saving responsibility of employees, which in turn positively influences their electricity saving behavior. Moreover, organizational reward policy buffers the positive relationship between responsibility and behavior. This study contributes to energy conservation literature by explaining what characteristics of leadership improve the electricity saving behavior of employees and how leader characteristics match with organizational policy to effectively manage this. The practical implications for electricity saving management are also discussed.

Highlights

As global economics grows rapidly, one of the negative aspects is the over consumption of energy that leads to global warming and damages the ecological environment [1,2]
Hypothesis 3 proposes that inspiration improves electricity saving responsibility, and research findings demonstrate the coefficient of this relationship is 0.13 (p < 0.01)
Electricity saving responsibility and organizational reward policy are positively related to electricity saving behavior (β = 0.50, p < 0.01; β = 0.40, p < 0.01)

Summary

Introduction

As global economics grows rapidly, one of the negative aspects is the over consumption of energy that leads to global warming and damages the ecological environment [1,2]. China is facing an energy over-consumption problem [3,4]. In 2018, the energy production of China was. 3.77 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, less than the recorded value in 2017. The energy consumption of China continued to increase, reaching as high as 4.64 billion tons of standard coal equivalent [5]. In addition to the environmental impact, energy consumption has long-term implications for health expenditure [6]. To inhibit damage to the environment, the United Nations (UN)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion