How Does Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership Fuel Employees' Low-Carbon Behavior? The Role of Environmental Self-Accountability and Power Distance Orientation

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 19; no. 5; p. 3025
• Main Authors: Xia, Yuhuan, Liu, Yubo, Han, Changlin, Gao, Yang, Lan, Yuanyuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 04.03.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Accountability; Behavior; Carbon; Carbon dioxide; China; Climate change; Cultural values; Emissions; Employees; Environmental degradation; Environmental impact; Environmental policy; Environmental protection; Green development; Humans; Leadership; Learning; Learning theory; Negotiating; Role models; Servant leadership; Social discrimination learning; Social learning; Social problems; Social Responsibility; Society; Supervisors; China; carbon neutrality; low-carbon behavior; power distance orientation; environmentally specific servant leadership; environmental self-accountability; social learning theory
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19053025

Environmental problems caused by excessive carbon emissions are becoming increasingly prominent and have received heightened attention in recent years. Encouraging people to adopt low-carbon behavior to reduce carbon emissions is desirable. Based on social learning theory, we developed and tested a moderated mediation model to investigate when and how environmentally specific servant (ESS) leadership impacts employees' low-carbon behavior (i.e., private low-carbon behavior and public low-carbon behavior). We tested our theoretical framework with a sample of 483 subordinates and their direct supervisors working in northern China. The results indicate that ESS leadership is positively related to employees' low-carbon behavior, and that environmental self-accountability plays a mediating role in this relationship. In addition, power distance orientation strengthens the direct effects of ESS leadership on employees' environmental self-accountability and low-carbon behavior, as well as the indirect effect of ESS leadership on private low-carbon behavior via environmental self-accountability. Our findings contribute to the literature surrounding ESS leadership and low-carbon behavior, and help to promote green development and thus achieve the goals of carbon neutrality and decreasing carbon dioxide emissions.