How to encourage pro-environmental behaviour by employees in the workplace

This thesis investigates what factors large organizations can leverage to encourage voluntary pro-environmental behaviour by employees (VPBE) in an office environment. Based on literature that distinguishes between types of VPBE, two distinct types were constructed: simple and complex VPBE. Informed by the current literature, the following organizational factors were expected to have a positive influence on both types of VPBE: pro-environmental work climate of the organization and of co-workers and environmentally specific transformational leadership by the top management team and by the supervisor. Furthermore, it was expected that the effect of pro-environmental work climate by the organization and environmentally specific transformational leadership by the top management team would have a greater influence on complex VPBE than on simple VPBE, whereas the opposite was expected for the other two factors. Additionally, the personal factor environmental attitude was expected to have a positive influence on both types of VPBE and positively moderate the effect of the mentioned organisational factors. These hypotheses were checked through a questionnaire design at a large insurance broker in the Netherlands. Evidence was found to support the positive influence of a pro-environmental work climate of co-workers, environmentally specific transformational leadership by the supervisor and environmental attitude. However, environmental attitude only moderated the effect of a pro-environmental work climate of co-workers on simple and complex VPBE. Besides, the anticipated different effects on simple versus complex VPBE were only confirmed for environmentally specific transformational leadership by the supervisor and for a pro-environmental work climate of co-workers for employees with a low environmental attitude. These results suggests that further research into differentiating between types of VPBE is needed.