Promoting employees’ pro‐environmental behaviour through empowering leadership: The roles of psychological ownership, empowerment role identity, and environmental self‐identity

This study develops a theoretical model to investigate when and why empowering leadership promotes employees’ pro‐environmental behaviour (PEB). Synthesising psychological ownership theory and role identity theory, we propose that empowering leadership positively affects the employees’ PEB and that this relationship is mediated by psychological ownership. Furthermore, we examine the moderating roles of empowerment role identity and environmental self‐identity in this relationship. By employing 203 leader–follower dyads as a sample, we find that empowering leadership is positively related to employees’ PEB and that employees’ psychological ownership mediates this relationship. Besides, we find that empowerment role identity plays a moderating role in the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ psychological ownership such that the relationship is positive and significant when empowerment role identity is high but not significant when it is low. Finally, we observe that environmental self‐identity moderates the relationship between employees’ psychological ownership and PEB such that the relationship is positive and significant when environmental self‐identity is high, but not significant when it is low. Practically, we offer new insight into how and when organisations can leverage the positive effect of empowering leadership in the pursuit of promoting employees’ PEB.