The impact of green human resource management on hospitality employees’ quitting intention: A dual perspective study

Abstract

Green human resource management (GHRM) is being increasingly adopted by hospitality industry to help hotels achieve environmental goals and cater to the green focus of customers. The existing studies mostly focus on the impact of GHRM on green-related outcome variables, and few studies have explored the relationship between GHRM and non-green-related outcome variables. At the same time, the entire hospitality industry is facing the problems of high employee liquidity and a high turnover rate. Therefore, this study aims to explore the relationship between GHRM and employees' quitting intention in the hospitality industry through the mediating role of job embeddedness and the moderating role of servant leadership and employees' individual green values. Participants were 437 frontline employees from of 31 hotels in mainland China, and data were collected through conditional sampling and analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. It was found that GHRM can increase employees' job embeddedness, which in turn suppresses employees' quitting intentions. In this process, the level of employees' individual green value and the degree of servant leadership among management both have positive moderating effects. In terms of theoretical contributions, the path of influence of GHRM practices on employees' quitting intention is explored, which broadens the scope of GHRM research. The introduction of two moderating variables, servant leadership and individual green value, provides a new idea for subsequent research to explore the issue from the dual perspectives of both leadership and employees. In terms of practical implications, this study reveals to hospitality managers how GHRM can help reduce employee turnover and suggests ways of optimizing the effect by improving the level of employees' individual green value and promoting servant leadership among management.