The Impact of Green Psychological Climate on Organizational Citizenship Behavior for the Environment

In this research, we extend the nascent literature on green psychological climate by studying how it translates into employees' organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. We argue that a green psychological climate, consisting in injunctive social norms individually perceived, can trigger directly employees' organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. We also argue that there exist two possible indirect paths: one through organizational identification (i.e., a cognition proximate to employees' self-concept) and the second through perceived organizational and supervisory support for the environment (i.e., an ongoing social exchange relation in which the employees are embedded with their organization and its representatives). The specificity of our methodology is that we maintain the analysis at the individual level only, as our interest lies in understanding how employees interpret organizational signals, make sense of their organizational milieu, and translate this into actual behavior. Using primary data from an Argentinian large retailing company, we find support for the indirect effects of the green psychological climate on employees' organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. We do not find support for the direct effect. Overall, this research contributes to uncovering the social-psychological determinants of employees' behaviors.