The Impact of Responsible Leadership on Employee Green Behavior: Mediating Effect of Moral Reflectiveness and Moderating Effect of Empathy

Abstract

Based on the integrated perspectives of social learning theory and affect event theory, the paper discusses the impact mechanism of responsible leadership on employee green behavior. Questionnaire survey on 317 employees from many enterprises in Shandong Province and Shanghai in this paper, it is found that responsible leadership has a positive effect on employee green behavior, and moral reflectiveness plays a complete mediating role between responsible leadership and employee green behavior. Empathy moderates the negative relationship between moral reflectiveness and employee green behavior such that moral reflectiveness has a weaker negative effect on employee green behavior when employees’empathy is higher. Furthermore, empathy moderates the mediating effect of moral reflectiveness between responsible leadership and employee green behavior, the mediating effect of moral reflectiveness is weaker when empathy is higher. The results of this paper provide a new perspective for understanding how responsible leadership stimulates employee green behaviors, and have important practical significance for strengthening the environmental protection behaviors of organizations.