Green Leadership, Green Performance, and Organizational Sustainability in Tourism and Hospitality: Indirect Associations and Implications for Sustainable Development

This study examines the direct and indirect associations of green leadership with green performance and organizational sustainability through green work climate and green innovative behavior. Drawing on Social Information Processing Theory, it specifies a bounded associational framework that differentiates leadership-related environmental cues, employee-perceived workplace context, self-reported behavioral action, and employee-assessed organization-referent outcomes. Data were collected from 798 employees working in five-star hotels and licensed travel agencies in Saudi Arabia and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal positive associations among all focal constructs. Green leadership is most strongly associated with green work climate, while green innovative behavior is more closely associated with green performance than with organizational sustainability. All hypothesized specific and theoretically ordered serial indirect coefficients are statistically significant, including the extended association linking green leadership with organizational sustainability through green work climate, green innovative behavior, and green performance. By jointly estimating direct, specific indirect, and serial indirect associations, the study differentiates the perceptual and behavioral functions of green work climate and green innovative behavior and distinguishes green performance from broader organizational sustainability. From a sustainable development perspective, the findings identify employee-assessed organizational conditions associated with resource efficiency, waste reduction, environmentally oriented innovation, continuing environmental and social responsibility, local economic participation, and community well-being. These areas are relevant particularly to Sustainable Development Goals 8, 9, 12, and 13. However, because sustainable development was not directly measured, these implications concern the potential contribution of organizational practices to sustainable development rather than verified destination- or societal-level development outcomes.