Work and leisure: negative cross-contextual spillover of individuals’ pro-environmental behaviours from workplace to hotel

Abstract

This study investigates whether pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) in the workplace have a negative cross-contextual spillover effect on PEBs in a hotel context. The latter setting differs due to the privacy and hedonic nature of the hotel context and the disappearance of social pressures from the workplace. Furthermore, the contribution ethic and identity resilience are incorporated into the research framework to understand the negative cross-contextual spillover. The results reveal that workplace PEBs are negatively associated with hotel PEBs, and the negative spillover effect of low-effort workplace PEBs is smaller than that of high-effort workplace PEBs. PEBs in the workplace positively affect the contribution ethic, and the contribution ethic negatively affects PEBs in a hotel context. Notably, high-effort workplace PEBs have a greater positive impact on a person’s contribution ethic than low-effort workplace PEBs. The negative cross-contextual spillover effect is contingent on identity resilience, and identity resilience positively moderates the negative relationships between workplace PEBs, the contribution ethic, and hotel PEBs. The findings offer hospitality scholars and practitioners a deeper insight into consumers’ PEBs in a hotel context and provide guidelines on how to reduce the negative cross-contextual spillovers of PEBs in the workplace.

Keywords:

• Cross-contextual spillover
• pro-environmental behaviours
• contribution ethic
• identity resilience
• identity process theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 71974177) and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant number 2022M713026).

Notes on contributors

Jing Wang

Dr. Jing Wang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of University of Science and Technology of China. Her research interests include green tourism and tourism marketing.

Shanyong Wang

Dr. Shanyong Wang is an Associate Professor of University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests include sustainable development, green consumption and green tourism management. He has published several articles in many high quality hospitality and tourism journals.

Yu Wang

Dr. Yu Wang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of University of Science and Technology of China. Her research interests include sustainable development and green innovation.

Jiusong Chen

Dr. Jiusong Chen is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests are in the areas of environmental governance and sustainable development.