Fostering Employees’ Voluntary Green Behavior: The Role of Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership, Positive Affectivity, and Workplace Anxiety

Abstract

The recent introduction of servant leadership into the research on pro-environmental behavior in organizations has stimulated interest and concern among scholars on how an environmentally specific servant leader fosters their subordinates’ green behavior. Drawing from affective event theory, this study focuses on the underlying affective mechanism linking environmentally specific servant leadership and employee voluntary green behavior. Using two-wave data from 190 employees in two organizations, we found that environmentally specific servant leadership was indirectly related to employee voluntary green behavior via positive affectivity. Moreover, workplace anxiety moderated the indirect effect, such that it was only significant and positive under low levels of workplace anxiety. Overall, our study sheds light on the role the effect plays in unpacking the influence of environmentally specific servant leadership on employee voluntary green behavior.