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Article

How Can Organizational Leadership Promote Environmental Behaviors through Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Adoption? The Moderating Role of Environmental Awareness

by
Chih-Wen Ting
1,
Hung-Xin Li
2,
Kuei-Hsien Chen
3,*,
Yue-Shi Lee
4 and
Show-Jane Yen
4
1
Department of Finance, Nanhua University, Chiayi 622301, Taiwan
2
Department of Logistics Management, National Defense University, Taipei City 112305, Taiwan
3
Department of Marketing and Logistics Management, College of Business Management, Chihlee University of Technology, New Taipei City 220305, Taiwan
4
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Ming Chuan University, Taipei City 111013, Taiwan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2024, 16(17), 7677; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177677
Submission received: 25 June 2024 / Revised: 19 August 2024 / Accepted: 30 August 2024 / Published: 4 September 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Gray Shades of Sustainability Issues in Organization Management)
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Abstract

:
Environmental behaviors are critical for the sustainability of business organizations. However, the role of organizational leadership and corporate social responsibility in predicting employees’ environmental behaviors has been underexplored. This paper takes an innovative approach to fill this gap, drawing on the upper echelons theory and organizational identification theory. It explains how the adoption of organizational leadership by top management teams can influence companies’ adoption of corporate social responsibility policy and encourage employees to engage in environmental behavior, with the moderating role of environmental awareness. The research analyze longitudinal-section data based on empirical data from a three-wave sampling of 160 chief executive officers and their employees over six months. By advancing the literature on corporate social responsibility, this paper provides a paradigm for companies to implement environmental behaviors through leadership mechanisms, thereby achieving competitive advantage and sustainable development.

1. Introduction

To meet stakeholders’ expectations, firms should adopt management mechanisms to promote employees’ environmental behaviors, as these environmental behaviors can increase competitive advantage [1,2,3] and deal with stakeholders’ ecological concerns. Environmental problems have attracted everyone’s attention because human activities have caused many serious issues, such as droughts, floods, and climate warming [4,5,6]. In addition, governments are also concerned about environmental issues and adopt institutional policies to reduce climate warming. Therefore, previous investigations have put much effort into simultaneously achieving economic development and ecological friendliness [7,8,9]. These surveys suggest that environmental behaviors may be an essential solution, as environmental behaviors refer to individuals taking actions to avoid harming the environment to achieve environmental sustainability. However, previous investigations have always used personality [10,11], environmental attitude [12,13], or institutional theory [14,15] to predict environmental behaviors, generating a limited perspective on how to promote environmental behaviors. Although these investigations continue to explore the causes of environmental behaviors, the origin of environmental behaviors is still not broad enough [1,2,3], which is the first crucial gap in environmental behaviors. Indeed, companies should encourage their employees to demonstrate environmentally friendly behaviors to allow the company to maintain a green competitive advantage because environmental behaviors are an essential source of sustainable corporate development. Environmental behavior represents the extent to which employees save resources. [16]. However, past investigations paid little attention to how organizational management mechanisms lead to environmental behaviors, so organizations do not know how to elicit environmental behavior from employees, which is the second crucial gap in environmental behaviors. To our knowledge, Huang et al.’s [17] article is the only article similar to the concept of this paper. Still, their article explores how environmental leadership can increase employees’ pro-environmental behavior rather than the environmental behavior (resource recycling behavior) investigated in this paper. Moreover, this paper is based on the perspective of environmental leadership. It explores how to increase firms’ willingness to adopt corporate social responsibility, which has a significant incremental contribution compared to Huang’s article. Indeed, although many articles have discussed the issues of environmental behaviors, because of their importance, there is a need to continue to have articles with different perspectives to lead the future trend in environmental behaviors, which is also the main contribution of this paper.
This article introduces the concept of environmental leadership and adds social responsibility to link environmental behavior to fill past research gaps. Exploring the essential drivers of environmental behaviors is critical as it leads to long-term sustainable business goals [18,19], which is the first incremental contribution of this article. This research adopts the theory of upper echelons [20] and organizational identification [21] to propose that a top management team’s environmental leadership is essential to influencing a company’s adoption of corporate social responsibility. The theory of upper echelons [20] believes that the values of a top manager can impact a company’s adoption of strategic types since a top manager can control most of the company’s resources, which supports the relationship between environmental leadership and corporate social responsibility policy adoption. In addition, based on organizational identification theory, employees will make their behaviors consistent with their organization’s values. Therefore, when a company adopts a corporate social responsibility policy, employees will demonstrate environmental behaviors that are consistent with the values of the social responsibility policy. The organizational identification theory refers to how employees see themselves as members and exhibit behaviors to meet organizational values [21].
Finally, this research adopts environmental awareness as a moderator because the more substantial awareness of the environment, the stronger the willingness of employees to behave environmentally because of their organizational corporate social responsibility policy. Although these variables have been examined in past investigations [1,2], there are few investigations to propose a novel model combining organizational leadership, corporate social responsibility, and environmental awareness simultaneously to predict environmental behaviors, which is the second incremental contribution of this article.
In conclusion, this article employs longitudinal data to analyze the causal relationship between environmental leadership, social responsibility policy, environmental behaviors, and environmental awareness since limited investigations adopt longitudinal-sectional designs to survey causal relationships [10,11,12]. Indeed, these investigations almost do not detect the situation in which human beings may modify their attitude and intentions to show how they understand present environmental factors, and they do not sufficiently examine this change in attitude and intentions.
This article fills the third gap using the longitudinal data at three time points over six months. In addition to proposing a new mechanism for predicting environmental behavior, this article can also serve as a reference for enterprises to formulate sustainable management strategies. The research question (RQ) is as follows:
RQ: Can environmental leadership promote environmental behaviors through the key role of corporate social responsibility policy and environmental awareness?

2. Literature Review

2.1. Environmental Leadership

Although leadership has historically guided employees’ thinking, the concept has no unified definition. However, scholars have come to believe that leadership should continue to evolve and develop to adapt to future environmental protection issues. Due to global warming and the greenhouse effect, companies have slowly changed their past thinking and turned to environmental organizational management behaviors to meet social expectations. This change has also given rise to the new concept of environmental leadership [22]. However, environmental leaders must focus not only on operational matters within the organization but also on waste, pollution, and resource conservation issues during product production to meet the expectations of environmental stakeholders. In addition, environmental leaders refer to leaders who pay attention to the communities and residents near the product manufacturing factory, ultimately requiring organizations to assume these related responsibilities to comply with ethical responsibilities for human well-being [23]. Therefore, this article addresses the possible linkage between environmental leadership and corporate social responsibility, which is the first significant contribution of this article.

2.2. Corporate Social Responsibility Policy

Corporate social responsibility refers to the notion that businesses have a responsibility to consider and contribute to the well-being of society beyond their financial interests. Companies have taken to integrating social and environmental concerns into their business operations and interactions with stakeholders [24]. Corporate social responsibility involves a wide range of activities and practices aimed at positively impacting society. These may include environmental sustainability (implementing eco-friendly practices, reducing carbon footprint, conserving resources, and promoting renewable energy), ethical business practices (upholding high standards of integrity, transparency, and fairness in all business dealings, including supply chain management), philanthropy and community involvement (supporting charitable causes, donating to nonprofits, and actively participating in community development initiatives), employee well-being (ensuring fair wages, providing a safe and inclusive work environment, promoting work–life balance, and offering opportunities for professional growth and development), stakeholder engagement (engaging with customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and local communities to understand their needs and concerns and incorporating their feedback into decision-making processes), and social impact initiatives (undertaking projects that address social issues such as poverty alleviation, education, healthcare, and promoting diversity and inclusion).
Corporate social responsibility aims to create a sustainable and environmental business model that benefits the company and society. By embracing corporate social responsibility, companies can enhance their reputation, attract and retain customers and employees, mitigate risks, and contribute to the overall well-being of the communities in which they operate. Therefore, this article addresses the possible linkage between corporate social responsibility and environmental behaviors, which is the second significant contribution of this article.

2.3. Environmental Behaviors

Environmental behaviors refer to the notion that individuals or groups positively impact the environment [16]. These behaviors aim to reduce environmental harm, conserve resources, and promote sustainability. Therefore, this article addresses the formation mechanism of environmental behaviors, which is the third significant contribution of this article.

2.4. The Upper Echelons Theory

The upper echelons theory is a concept in organizational theory and strategic management that emphasizes the impact of top executives’ characteristics on strategic choices [20]. The theory posits that top executives’ experiences, values, personalities, and other demographic characteristics will shape their interpretations and decisions, influencing organizational strategic choices. The theory suggests that top managers’ backgrounds and personal attributes—such as age, tenure, education, functional background, and personality traits—affect their perception and interpretation of situations, influencing their strategic choices.
This theory makes sense since top managers control most of their company’s resources and human resources; so, their preferences will affect the strategic activities in which the company allocates these resources and human resources and, in turn, affect the type of strategies the company adopts. Past empirical studies also confirm this perspective, and this theory has also been examined in different disciplines [5,9].
In summary, the upper echelons theory provides a framework for understanding how the attributes of top executives influence their strategic choices and, consequently, the performance of their organizations. There is limited research on the formation mechanism of environmental behaviors through the upper echelons theory. Therefore, this article addresses how the upper echelons theory explains the formation mechanism of environmental behaviors, which is the fourth significant contribution of this article.

2.5. The Organizational Identification Theory

The organizational identification theory explores the psychological connection between individuals and the organizations they are part of. It focuses on how employees perceive and define themselves in relation to their organization and how this identification influences their attitudes and behaviors [21]. It involves the alignment of an employee’s self-value with the perceived identity of the organization. That said, an employee will demonstrate behaviors that meet their organization’s values since the employee who identifies with their organization will see their organization’s values as their own. For example, corporate social responsibility policy will drive employees who strongly identify with their organization to demonstrate corporate social responsibility-related behaviors (e.g., environmental behaviors). Past empirical studies also confirm this perspective, and this theory has also been examined in different disciplines [3,6].
This theory highlights the importance of creating and maintaining a positive organizational identity that employees can connect with. Organizations can foster more robust identification by promoting shared values, ensuring fair and supportive leadership, and building a positive and inclusive work culture. Therefore, this article addresses how the organizational identification theory explains the formation mechanism of environmental behaviors, which is the fifth significant contribution of this article.

2.6. Environmental Leadership of Top Management Teams and Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Adoption

Environmental leadership means the degree to which a leader maintains relationships with stakeholders through understanding, access, protection, and connection [22]. Corporate social responsibility policy refers to the extent to which a firm adopts environmental policies to meet stakeholder welfare [25]. According to the upper echelons theory [20] mentioned above, the value of a top management team will lead the company to adopt a strategy that is consistent with its values, and an environmental leader has values that are concerned with social responsibility, thereby linking the relationship between corporate social responsibility policy adoption and environmental leadership. Indeed, the upper echelons theory states that a top management team is empowered to allocate resources among different company activities so that an environmental leader will allocate more resources to social responsibility-related policies, such as corporate social responsibility policy.
Hypothesis 1.
A top management team’s level of environmental leadership is positively related to a company’s adoption of a corporate social responsibility policy.

2.7. Corporate Social Responsibility Policy and Environmental Behaviors

Based on the organizational identification theory [21] mentioned above, employees should exhibit behaviors consistent with their organization’s values. Past surveys have proven that employees identify with their companies, and these employees should adjust their values to align with their companies’ values [26]. That said, based on the organizational identification theory, while companies adopt a corporate social responsibility policy, employees of these companies should exhibit behaviors consistent with this corporate social responsibility policy, such as environmental behaviors. Furthermore, past surveys have proven that employees have characteristics similar to those of their companies [27]; so, adopting a corporate social responsibility policy should induce environmental behaviors.
Hypothesis 2.
Higher corporate social responsibility policy adoption is positively related to environmental behaviors.

2.8. Environmental Awareness as a Boundary Condition

Environmental awareness indicates the degree of an employee’s interest, concern, and attitude toward reducing environmental pollution, according to Li et al. [28]. Employees with more environmental awareness perceptions are likelier to display more environmental behaviors induced by their organizational values (e.g., corporate social responsibility policy) because they profoundly experience environmental issues and knowledge [29], which will more smoothly stimulate their environmental protection behavior. In addition, past studies also confirm the moderating role of environmental awareness between environmental-related variables [30,31]. That said, environmental awareness can enhance the environmental-related strategy and its antecedents; so, companies should pay more attention to the impact of environmental awareness.
Hypothesis 3.
When the level of environmental awareness is high, the relationship between corporate social responsibility policy and environmental behaviors is high.

3. Methodology

We now address the research model (Figure 1) mentioned above. The theoretical model describes that environmental leadership will cause corporate social responsibility adoption and then will cause environmental behaviors through the perspective of the theories of upper echelons and organizational identification. Finally, this research adopts environmental awareness as a moderator between corporate social responsibility adoption and environmental behaviors.

3.1. Measurements

This article provides all the scales in Appendix A. This article uses the scale from Huang et al. [23] to evaluate environmental leadership because this scale is commonly used in empirical surveys. A sample scale item is “My supervisor shows awareness of the relevant stakeholder claims”. Turker’s [24] scale is used to evaluate corporate social responsibility because this scale is commonly used in empirical surveys. A sample scale item is “My company implements corporate social responsibility to alleviate its negative impact on the natural environment”. This article uses the scale from Lamm et al. [16] to evaluate environmental behaviors because this scale is commonly used in empirical surveys. A sample scale item is “I feel that I am a person who properly disposes of electronic waste”. Finally, this article uses Li et al.’s [28] scale to measure environmental awareness because this scale is commonly used in empirical surveys. A sample scale item is “I prefer products with environmental certification labels”. This research adopts a Likert five-point scale and reflective scale items to evaluate all variables. These scales have had their reliability and validity confirmed through past empirical studies [16,23,24,28].

3.2. Sample Collection Design

This research contacted several technology development associations to collect a sample list of technology companies. This research collects a sample of technology companies through the sample list, and 160 chief executive officers and their employees (members of top management teams) from these companies are willing to participate in this survey. This article chooses top managers as a sample because the upper echelons theory states that the chief executive officers’ values will influence the company’s strategy type (e.g., corporate social responsibility). This article asks the employees to rate their supervisors’ environmental leadership and their perceptions of environmental awareness and the 160 chief executive officers to rate the adoption of corporate social responsibility and their employees’ environmental behaviors at time 1. Three months after time 1, this article asks the employees to rate their perceptions of environmental awareness and the 160 chief executive officers to rate the adoption of corporate social responsibility and their employees’ environmental behaviors at time 2. Three months after time 2, this article asks the employees to rate their perceptions of environmental awareness and the 160 chief executive officers to rate the adoption of corporate social responsibility and their employees’ environmental behaviors at time 3. The response rate at the three time points was 100%.
To avoid social desirability bias, this article uses anonymous coding to collect data to prevent respondents from deliberately filling in higher-scoring answers to please their supervisors or companies.
This article uses a three-month sampling frame between the three time points because past empirical investigations have found that a three-month interval can capture differences in changes in attitudes or intentions [32], and it can also mitigate bias caused by standard method variation [33].

3.3. Potential Growth Modeling

The potential growth model is the extended model of covariance structure analysis [22,23] and is gradually used in the empirical study. The most significant advantage of latent growth curve modeling is that it can handle the problem of variable repeated measurement. For example, this article investigated the data of three time points to analyze the theoretical model, and the potential growth curve modeling can analyze the linear growths of the environmental commitment and environmental behavior over time and how these growths affect the growths in its outcome variables.
In this article, the perception of environmental leadership of the time one is linked with the slope and initial state of corporate social responsibility adoption, and the slope and the initial status of corporate social responsibility adoption are associated with the initial state and the slope of environmental behaviors (please see Figure 2). This research uses the potential growth model instead of the structural equation model or traditional regression analysis because the structural equation or traditional regression analysis cannot handle the three time points of the longitudinal section. Moreover, this research involves potential construct issues and cannot be analyzed using traditional regression analysis. For a detailed discussion of the potential growth model, readers are recommended to refer to past studies by scholars [22,23].

4. Analysis

4.1. Validity Analysis and Reliability Analysis

This research calculates the composition reliability (reliability) and average variance extracted (validity) by confirmatory factor analysis. In addition, Cronbach’s alpha is also calculated in Table 1. Based on Table 1, the reliability and validity meet the suggestions by Cheung et al. [34]. In addition, the model’s GFI, CFI, and NFI were all higher than 0.9, and the RMSEA was less than 0.05 Cheung et al. [34]. The measurement model in the present paper achieves reliability and validity.

4.2. Analysis Results

This research shows the analysis results in Figure 2 and Table 2. Based on Table 2, environmental leadership significantly influences corporate social responsibility adoption (path coefficient = 0.33, p value < 0.01) so the analysis result supports Hypothesis 1. In other words, more environmental leadership from supervisors at time 1 will cause greater intentionality for companies to adopt corporate social responsibility.
The analysis result also shows the significant effect of corporate social responsibility adoption on environmental behaviors (path coefficient = 0.38, p value < 0.01); so, Hypothesis 2 is confirmed. That said, employees who perceive greater intentionality from corporations to adopt corporate social responsibility will demonstrate more significant environmental behaviors.
This analysis also shows the significant moderating effect of environmental awareness between corporate social responsibility adoption and environmental behaviors (path coefficient = 0.23, p value < 0.01), thereby supporting Hypothesis 3.

5. Discussion

5.1. The Contribution for Theoretical Concept

First, this research fully responds to the research question mentioned above since the analysis results significantly support the effect of environmental leadership on environmental behaviors through the mediating role of corporate social responsibility adoption. In addition, it also argues that environmental awareness moderates the connection between environmental behaviors and corporate social responsibility adoption. Based on the analysis result of Hypothesis 1, environmental leadership from the top management team indeed promotes corporate social responsibility adoption since the top management team can allocate resources among different company activities, which will influence the company’s strategic choice. Past investigations also support this perspective [2,5,9]. In addition, For Hypothesis 2, corporate social responsibility adoption promotes environmental behaviors based on the analysis result since the employees want to demonstrate corporate social responsibility-related behaviors (e.g., environmental behaviors) to meet the organizational value. Past investigations also support this perspective [1,2,3]. Finally, although few investigations have examined the moderating role of environmental awareness, Hypothesis 3 is supported by the analysis result of this article. Employees with higher levels of environmental awareness have deep experience with environmental issues and knowledge, so they will smoothly stimulate their environmental behaviors.
Second, this article addresses the antecedents of environmental behaviors based on the longitudinal data and analysis results. The results confirm the link between environmental leadership, corporate social responsibility adoption, environmental behaviors, and environmental awareness. Indeed, previous investigations have brought an essential question about exploring antecedents of environmental behaviors [16,17,18,19], as these antecedents can promote environmental behaviors to implement sustainable development. For example, Ansari et al. [35] predicted customers’ environmental behaviors through customer engagement. Chang et al. [36] predicted environmental behaviors through the theory of planned behavior. Chao et al. [37] adopted the theory of social networks to predict environmental behaviors. Few surveys have addressed the link between leadership and environmental behaviors. In particular, the link has not been addressed through the key moderating and mediating roles of environmental awareness and corporate social responsibility, demonstrating this article’s significant incremental contribution.
Third, although previous investigations have surveyed environmental leadership and its consequences, limited studies have extended it to the sustainability field to research its effects on environmental behaviors. This problem is regrettable, as environmental leadership is a universal concept in the workplace. For example, previous investigations have surveyed a variety of effects of leadership [22,23] but have overlooked the critical impact of corporate social responsibility adoption on environmental behaviors. Therefore, the present research raises a novel perspective on leadership and environmental behaviors and guides a new research direction of environmental organization behaviors through organizational leadership mechanisms.
Fourth, to our knowledge, this research is one of few studies to employ the theory of meaning management and organizational identification to open the black box of environmental behaviors, so this research makes a significantly incremental contribution to upper echelons theory and organizational identity theory. Because few studies have applied upper echelons theory to explain why companies adopt corporate social responsibility, this article is the first to propose a combination of environmental leadership mechanisms to demonstrate the applicability of upper echelons theory, contributing to upper echelons theory. In addition, few studies in the past combined upper echelons theory and ESG (environmental, social, governance) strategies, which can provide a new milestone for upper echelons theory and the ESG research literature. Finally, most past investigations on organizational identity theory have only explored employee performance-level factors [38,39,40]. Few studies have applied organizational identity theory to environmental management and explored why employees exhibit environmental behaviors, providing a novel perspective on organizational identity theory and environmental behavior. In short, this article combines upper echelons theory and organizational identity theory to explain how organizational leadership mechanisms lead to employees’ environmental behaviors, providing a new possibility for the theory that combines the two theories.
Finally, past research on environmental leadership has mainly discussed how environmental leadership promotes a company’s innovation or performance [41,42,43]. Still, few studies have discussed how environmental leadership promotes a company’s adoption of corporate social responsibility and environmental behaviors. This article fills in the gaps in past research and leads to new directions for future research on environmental leadership.

5.2. The Contribution for Practical Concept

Enterprises should adopt environmental behavior enhancement strategies to encourage employees’ environmental behaviors because environmental behaviors can enhance the enterprise’s green competitive advantage. Because environmental leadership plays an essential role in driving employees’ environmental behaviors, the concept of environmental leadership should be incorporated into the company’s annual education and training plan. In addition to promoting employees’ environmental behaviors through education and training, companies should also create environmental awareness to enhance employees’ environmental behaviors. In particular, environmental awareness can promote corporate social responsibility and employees’ environmental behaviors.
The company can consider adding an environmental leadership group to formulate a comprehensive environmental leadership training plan. In addition to using environmental leadership to increase the company’s environmental behaviors, the company can also set up a monthly environmental protection day. On the environmental protection day, employees can be led to assist nearby communities with environmental protection activities. It can increase the company’s brand image and employees’ environmental awareness and behaviors.

5.3. Future Research and Limitations

Although this research employs environmental leadership as a key antecedent of environmental behaviors, other leadership styles may influence environmental behaviors. Further studies must detect different leadership styles in different contexts.
Second, this paper addresses that environmental leadership, corporate social responsibility adoption, and environmental awareness can form environmental behaviors. Still, this paper may ignore other essential mechanisms in other situations. Further studies should detect other fundamental mechanisms in different situations. For example, social identity may be a potential construct that promotes environmental behaviors since employees intend to demonstrate behaviors that meet their ecological values.
Third, although this article collects 160 chief executive officers and their employees at technology companies in Taiwan, further studies must survey different countries and industries to verify the research model of this research. Furthermore, future studies must collect possible references and arguments for these hypotheses.
Fourth, this study is an empirical study instead of a survey of statistical algorithms, so further studies must conduct more in-depth algorithm optimization for specific statistical analysis methods to more accurately analyze the theoretical model of this article, such as panel data. In addition, further studies should also analyze which sampling interval is suitable for analysis since it can accurately diagnose the empirical data. Finally, this article is only initial research, so further research must embed the meaning management theory and organizational identification theory into the theoretical model and provide more justification for the three hypotheses.
Fifth, in the theoretical framework of this article, there may be possible variables that can replace environmental leadership or environmental commitment, and further study should dig out other vital variables. Although this article uses the longitudinal data to analyze the theoretical model, the link between these variables in this article must be validated by more investigations. In addition, although this article proposes three hypotheses through the past literature and theory, it still cannot infer the validity of the theoretical model. In other words, more data and tests should be used to verify the “hypothesis repeatedly”. Further research should apply more analytical methods to verify the theoretical model of this project, such as neural networks, hierarchical linear models, or qualitative research methods.
Sixth, although this article uses environmental awareness as a positive moderating variable between corporate social responsibility and environmental behavior, other suitable moderating variables should be examined, which is left for future research. For example, whether employees identify with the organization or not, they must show behaviors that identify with it. Therefore, organizational identification [44,45,46] may also be an important moderating variable because it can enhance the relationship between a company’s adoption of corporate social responsibility and employee environmental behavior.
Seventh, although this article uses multiple sources and multiple time points to reduce the problem of common method bias, it is recommended that future research use longer-term studies or different measurement methods, such as brain wave measurement [47,48,49].
Eighth, although this article uses the existing literature and borrows upper echelons theory and organizational identity theory as support for the hypothesis, this evidence may not be enough to support the hypothesis of this article entirely. It is recommended that future research add more theories and literature to strengthen this article. The hypotheses of this article should be tested using more rigorous empirical methods.
Finally, although this article uses the behavioral science questionnaire method to verify how environmental leadership can influence the adoption of social responsibility to promote environmental behavior, future research should consider how to incorporate the latest research trends in current corporate social responsibility, such as net-zero carbon emissions to improve the theoretical model of this article. In addition, future surveys should also use database methods to verify the theoretical model of this article because the questionnaire survey method cannot achieve statistical robustness.

6. Conclusions

This article opens the black box for implementing environmental behaviors and sets up a new milestone of sustainable development for technology firms. This article collected data from 160 chief executive officers and their employees at technology companies through three time points over six months in Taiwan to validate the research model. The results of this analysis support that environmental leadership promotes corporate social responsibility adoption and environmental behaviors, and environmental awareness moderates these relationships. In other words, technology firms can implement environmental behaviors through environmental leadership to achieve sustainable development goals. Finally, this article promotes the literature development of environmental behaviors from environmental leadership. It addresses a paradigm to assist technology firms in environmental behaviors to implement sustainable development goals.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, Y.-S.L.; Methodology, C.-W.T.; Software, K.-H.C.; Validation, K.-H.C.; Investigation, C.-W.T.; Resources, H.-X.L.; Data curation, S.-J.Y.; Writing—original draft, H.-X.L.; Writing—review & editing, K.-H.C. and Y.-S.L.; Visualization, S.-J.Y.; Supervision, K.-H.C., Y.-S.L. and S.-J.Y.; Project administration, C.-W.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Appendix A. Measurement Items

VariableEvaluation Items
Environmental LeadershipMy supervisor
1. …inspires me in an environmentally friendly manner.
2. …tells the environmental vision for me.
3. …encourages me to achieve the environmental goals.
4. …stimulates me to think about the green performance.
5. …gets me to work together for the same environmental goals.
Corporate Social
Responsibility		I feel that my company is highly concerned for…
1. employee well-being.
2. local communities.
3. environment management.
4. corporate giving to worthy causes.
Environmental Awareness1. I always maintain an environmentally friendly lifestyle in my daily life.
2. Using energy-saving products is respectful.
3. I am willing to pay extra money for environmental protection.
Environmental
Behaviors		1. I am a person who recycles my bottles, cans, and other containers.
2. I am a person who uses scrap paper for notes instead of fresh paper.
3. I am a person who prints double-sided.
4. I am a person who turns off my lights when leaving my office for any reason.
5. I am a person who recycles used paper.
6. I am a person who powers off my computer when away for more than 3 h.

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Sustainability 16 07677 g001
Figure 1. Theoretical Model.
Figure 1. Theoretical Model.
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Figure 2. The analysis model of the present study. Note: EL = Environmental Leadership; CSR = Corporate Social Responsibility; EB = Environmental Behaviors. Yn = Measurement items. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.
Figure 2. The analysis model of the present study. Note: EL = Environmental Leadership; CSR = Corporate Social Responsibility; EB = Environmental Behaviors. Yn = Measurement items. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01.
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Table 1. The analysis technique of confirmatory factor.
Table 1. The analysis technique of confirmatory factor.
ConstructsItemsλCronbach’s αComposite ReliabilityAverage Variation Extracted
Environmental LeadershipEL010.861 **0.9440.910.67
EL020.882 **
EL030.845 **
EL040.721 **
EL050.779 **
Corporate Social Responsibility AdoptionEC010.893 **0.9130.900.69
EC020.906 **
EC030.793 **
EC040.716 **
Environmental AwarenessEA010.836 **0.800.880.71
EA020.875 **
EA030.830 **
Environmental BehaviorsPB010.764 **0.9010.890.57
PB020.734 **
PB030.752 **
PB040.710 **
PB050.784 **
PB060.809 **
Notes: (1) **: p < 0.01; (2) RMR = 0.047; RMSEA = 0.041; GFI = 0.91; CFI = 0.90; NFI = 0.91.
Table 2. Path analysis results.
Table 2. Path analysis results.
HypothesisRelationship PathCoefficient
Hypothesis 1Environmental Leadership →
Corporate Social Responsibility Adoption		0.33 **
Hypothesis 2Corporate Social Responsibility Adoption →
Environmental Behaviors		0.39 **
Hypothesis 3Environmental awareness × Corporate Social Responsibility Adoption → Environmental Behaviors0.09 **
Note: ** = p < 0.01.
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MDPI and ACS Style

Ting, C.-W.; Li, H.-X.; Chen, K.-H.; Lee, Y.-S.; Yen, S.-J. How Can Organizational Leadership Promote Environmental Behaviors through Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Adoption? The Moderating Role of Environmental Awareness. Sustainability 2024, 16, 7677. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177677

AMA Style

Ting C-W, Li H-X, Chen K-H, Lee Y-S, Yen S-J. How Can Organizational Leadership Promote Environmental Behaviors through Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Adoption? The Moderating Role of Environmental Awareness. Sustainability. 2024; 16(17):7677. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177677

Chicago/Turabian Style

Ting, Chih-Wen, Hung-Xin Li, Kuei-Hsien Chen, Yue-Shi Lee, and Show-Jane Yen. 2024. "How Can Organizational Leadership Promote Environmental Behaviors through Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Adoption? The Moderating Role of Environmental Awareness" Sustainability 16, no. 17: 7677. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177677

APA Style

Ting, C.-W., Li, H.-X., Chen, K.-H., Lee, Y.-S., & Yen, S.-J. (2024). How Can Organizational Leadership Promote Environmental Behaviors through Corporate Social Responsibility Policy Adoption? The Moderating Role of Environmental Awareness. Sustainability, 16(17), 7677. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177677

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