In the last half century, the relatively short research history of Environmental Psychology emerged, and as more attention was derived towards climate change, numerous studies examine the complex factors and relations that lie behind the question most frequently asked in this field—what causes people to have Pro-environmental Behavior (PEB)? (Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Cheng, 2004; Fietkau & Kessel, 1981a, 1981b; Harland, Staats, & Wilke, 2007; Hines, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1987; Karp, 1996; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002; Nordlund & Garvill, 2002; Stern, 2000; Stern, Dietz, Abel, Guagnano, & Kalof, 1999; Turaga, Howarth, & Borsuk, 2010)
Since firm’s action is one of the main direct sources of many environmental problems (Stern, 2000)., both directly and indirectly, it is vital that firms act green no matter whether they provide environmental friendly products/service or not. Studies in different fields of business have started to investigate in ways of how a corporation could act greener through strategies such as environmental marketing strategy (Menon
& Menon, 1997), green-supply chains, green buildings, eco-labeling, degradable product materials, etc. Shrivastava (1995) also gave insight on more strategies on total quality environmental management, ecologically sustainable competitive strategies, technology transfer through technology-for nature-swaps, and reducing the impact of populations on ecosystems. Banerjee (2002) also discusses about corporate environmental orientation and environmental strategy focus, and found both to be a two-dimensional construct of internal and external orientations.
As the momentum of going green is increasing, there are still firms that still run inefficiently and pollutes by finding loopholes in the law. Therefore, it is important to find out what are the intentions that make firms go green. In Bansal and Roth (2000)’s
study, we learned some of the main intentions of why firms act green—competitiveness, legitimation, and ecological responsibility (which were influenced by three contextual conditions: field cohesion, issue salience, and individual concern). From here, we can learn that one of the main intentions that influence firms go green the most is competitiveness, and by this fact, we can connect that if employees act environmentally, the related costs may go down and increase their competitiveness. For example, some of the aspects that employers usually expect employees to act green on are actions such as reusing used paper, conserving electricity by using less air-conditioning and taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. Moreover, Ciocirlan (2016) refines the concept of the environmental workplace behaviors (EWBs), and stated that “green employees (subset of all employees)” with the right mix of individual traits and organizational characteristics, can make a positive impact on the environment, no matter what level of the organization they are situated at. Other benefits that might intriguer firms to go green are the “enhanced corporate image” to customers if they obtain environmental management system certifications, such as ISO-14001(Eng Ann, Zailani, & Abd Wahid, 2006). Moreover, a positive correlation between the environmental effort of managers and organizational operation efficiency, profits and business image were also shown in the Empirical study of Naffziger, Ahmed, and Montagno (2003).
A growing body of research refers to imply the importance of environmental decisions to managers, customers and other stakeholders are thriving these years;
however, only recently can we see researches on the topic on Green Human Resources Management (Green HRM), and to see the importance, we reference to Mandip (2012), where the study develops a more detailed process involved in Green HRM, and claimed
opening of the discussion about managing employees’ actions in this field is a good start, since the responsibility to act pro-environmentally it shouldn’t be just the “green employees,” but all of members of them firm. Takala and Pallab (2000) mentions that
‘employees have to be socialized into the fact that along with the firm, they are equally responsible for morally right, pro-environmental actions; Maclagan (1999) also stated that ‘a better alignment of organizational policy and employee’s values holds possibilities for enhanced motivation and work performance.’ Stern (2000) also argued that behaviors of individuals could significantly affect the environment through influencing the actions of organizations that they belong to.
We have discussed the many researches that demonstrate the importance of acting green in all dimensions, how firms may benefit from green employees, and that individuals can have an influence on the organization; however, the arguments seldom focus on the topic about Pro-environment Norm (PEN) within the firm, and how it may affect the “average” employees, and the relationship between one’s Environmental Value (EV) and their PEB. In Stern’s Value-Belief-Norm Theory (Stern et al., 1999), it states that in an environmental movement, people who accept a movement’s basic values, and believes that their actions can help the movement to achieve their aim, has a larger probability to provide support for the movement. Though Stern’s theory puts emphasis on personal norm than social norm, from this theory we can still refer that people who has a positive relationship with their EV and PEBs, with adding a factor of PEN, it may strengthen the relationship of the two. For example, people who believe global warming would conserve energy and may choose to walk the stairs instead of the elevator once in a while; when in a strong PEN environment where everyone takes the stairs, one may increase their frequency of their behavior of taking the stairs, as a
reflection of the increased relationship between their EV and PEB. Besides Stern’s Value-Belief-Norm Theory, there might be other social phycology explanations such as herd behavior, bandwagon effect, etc., but this would not be the focus in our discussion.
However, studies on PEBs in organizational work environments were seldom discussed, and the importance of implementing individual’s PEB influence on organizations is significant, since the act of firms can cause direct environmental impact (Stern, 2000). Therefore, in this study, whether the PEN of the work environment would affect employee’s PEB would be examined, in hope the find some of the factors that will influence employee’s PEB within the work environment they are in.