Investigating the impact of individual attitudinal and organizational variables on green behaviors and commuting at the workplace

Abstract

This paper responds to recent calls for further research on both individual attitudinal and organizational variables on employees’ green behaviors and sheds light on the influence and associations of these variables with four green employee behaviors: recycling, energy saving, printing reduction behaviors and commuting-related behavior, simultaneously. An initial theoretical model that identifies both individual (general environmentally friendly attitudes, the importance of organization’s environmentally friendly reputation) and organizational (perceived incentives from organization, perceived support from organization, perceived environmental behavior of organization) variables that can increase different types of green behaviors is put forward. Quantitative data from 1,204 employees were drawn from seven different British organizations (the first study of its type to do this) by Global Action Plan, a leading UK environmental charity. The data were collected via internet surveys, prior to employees’ exposure to interventions, in order to assist in the design of the interventions. The questionnaires employed to collect the data were not originally designed with these specific analyses in mind, which imposes some limitations. However, by using field data, this study has reduced some of the limitations of datasets collected primarily for academic research such as the lack realism and generalizability, and artificiality. SEM results suggest that creating separate interventions for each type of environmental behavior, as well as for each sector, and type (private vs. public) of organization, and each organization, might be needed. The variables accounted for 10% of the variance in recycling behavior; 15% in energy saving behavior; 5% in printing behavior; and 8% in commuting behavior. In addition to these variables, commuting behaviors are influenced by many factors: distance of work from home, weather conditions, financial constraints etc., many of which are out of the organizations’ control. Organizations aiming to increase commuting behaviors should first ensure that adequate infrastructure exists (i.e., frequent and accessible public transport from and to work) for individuals to be motivated to engage in such activities, without those activities affecting work/outputs in a negative way. Surprisingly, the research also found that the more favorable the perceptions of an organization’s environmental behavior, the lower the employees’ environmentally friendly commuting behaviors are. This might be because an employee’s commuting behavior is not seen as a contributor to the organization’s overall environmental behavior and that commuting behaviors can be seen as related more to the self, than to the organization. Further research is required to explore the reasons behind these results related to commuting behaviors.