Environmentally Specific Servant Leadership and Employees’ Energy-Specific Pro-Environmental Behavior: Evidence from Healthcare Sector of a Developing Economy

Abstract

Environmental issues are significantly rising worldwide. Addressing the environmental issues and preserving the biosphere is a critical matter of concern in this era. The sheer amount of total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world is related to the energy sector, especially electrical energy. A bulk of electrical energy is consumed by individuals in buildings for cooling and heating purposes. Prior researchers have emphasized employing clean and green energy sources to deal with environmental issues. The role of green energy from a decarbonization aspect is unchallengeable. However, a critical gap in most energy-related studies exists in the available literature. That is, most of the literature focuses on the supply side (the production) of energy, neglecting the critical issue lies with the demand side (consumption side). Energy data show that a sheer amount of electrical energy is wasted by individuals due to their inadequate energy consumption behavior. In this respect, a country’s healthcare system uses a significant amount of electrical energy. In particular, hospital staff uses a bulk of electricity during patient treatment, care, and other service delivery operations. The critical aim of this study is to improve the energy-specific pro-environmental behavior (EPEB) of hospital employees in an environmentally specific servant leadership (ESL) framework. Specifically, the study was conducted in Pakistan, which is a developing country. This study also tests the mediating effect of green self-efficacy (GSE) and green perceived organizational support (GPOS) in the above-proposed relationship. The data for the current work were collected from hospital employees by employing a survey strategy (n = 316) from a developing country. Structural equation modeling was considered to analyze the data, which confirmed that a servant leader with environmental preferences could significantly drive the EPEB of employees (β = 0.699), while GSE (β = 0.138) and GPOS (β = 0.102) mediated this relationship. The findings of this study can help the healthcare sector to improve its efforts toward de-carbonization by improving the energy consumption behavior of employees through ESL, GSE, and GPOS. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.