Employees' intentions to implement green practices in hotels: the interaction of green organizational climate with environmental attitudes and behaviours

This study aims at contributing to research on environmental sustainability in the hotel industry by investigating the influence of organizational green climate on the environmental attitudes and behaviour of hotels' employees. Drawing on previous research we assume that the organizational green climate is positively related to ecological behaviour and that it moderates the relationships between employees' environmental knowledge, environmental awareness and environmental concern and their ecological behaviour. In order to test our hypothesis, we developed an ad hoc questionnaire. Managers of hotels located in different touristic areas of Naples (Italy) were approached. Through the collection process, 350 usable responses from their employees were collected. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the research hypotheses. This paper contributes theoretically by enriching existing research on environmental sustainability in organizations by shedding light on how a source of external social norms for organizational members (i.e. perceived green organizational climate) interact with internal individual beliefs and values (e.g. environmental knowledge) in shaping their behaviours and intentions. At practice level, it provides some strategic guidelines to hotel managers to enhance employee intentions to support the implementation of environmental programs by leveraging both individual-related and organizational-related factors.