Inspiring green action at work: CSR, admiration, and environmental self-efficacy as drivers of energy-sustainable behavior in China's hospitality industry

This study examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) promotes employees' energy-related pro-environmental behavior in China's hospitality industry. Drawing on the theory of planned behavior as an organizing framework, the model treats CSR as an organizational cue that shapes perceived behavioral expectations and control-related beliefs while activating cognitive and affective mechanisms. Environmental self-efficacy represents the cognitive pathway through which employees develop confidence in their capacity to conserve energy, whereas admiration represents an affective pathway through which employees respond to the organization's perceived moral and environmental conduct. Environmental concern is modeled as a personal-value boundary condition on these first-stage mechanisms. Data were collected from employees of six upscale hotels in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou through a three-wave survey with two-week intervals. The final matched sample comprised 347 employees, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling in SmartPLS. CSR positively predicted energy-related pro-environmental behavior, environmental self-efficacy, and admiration. Both environmental self-efficacy and admiration transmitted the effect of CSR to energy-related pro-environmental behavior. Environmental concern strengthened the indirect pathway through environmental self-efficacy but did not significantly condition the parallel pathway through admiration. These findings advance micro-level CSR research by integrating cognitive and affective mechanisms in an energy-specific workplace model and demonstrate that environmental concern is more consequential for employees' confidence-based responses than for their admiration-based responses.