Modeling Corporate Environmental Responsibility Perceptions and Job-Seeking Intentions: Examining the Underlying Mechanism

Abstract

This study aims to propose and empirically test a research model to examine the relationship between prospective employees’ corporate environmental responsibility (CER) perceptions and their attraction to an organization based on social theories. This may be the first study to elucidate how CER perceptions can influence prospective employees’ job-seeking intentions by exploring the sequential mediating mechanism of organizational trust and job-seeking attitudes in a prehire context. Collecting data from a sample of 357 young prospective employees, the research hypotheses were tested using path analysis with AMOS (version 24), a structural equation modeling (SEM) program. The study results revealed direct association of CER perceptions and job-seeking attitudes with job-seeking intentions. Observably, the organizational trust could not predict job-seeking intentions. However, organizational trust and job-seeking attitudes together sequentially and partially mediated the direct effects of CER perceptions on job-seeking intentions. In line with the research findings, some notable theoretical contributions and practical implications for HR professionals have been discussed. The paper concludes by presenting some limitations and future research directions.