Green inclusive leadership and hospitality employees’ green service innovative behavior in the Chinese hospitality context: The roles of basic psychological needs and employee traditionality

With the Chinese hospitality industry’s continuous emphasis on environmental sustainability and meeting customers’ needs for eco-friendly services, how to motivate employees to implement green service innovative behaviors has become an important topic in the hospitality sector. Based on self-determination theory, this study investigates the motivational path that green inclusive leadership affects hospitality employees’ green service innovation behavior through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs and further verifies the moderating effect of employees’ traditionality in the Chinese hospitality context. Using a three-wave longitudinal design, we collected data from 367 full-time hospitality employees in 11 Chinese hotels. The results demonstrated that green inclusive leadership is positively associated with green service innovative behavior, mediated by the satisfaction of their basic psychological needs. Additionally, we confirmed that employee traditionality weakened the impact of green inclusive leadership on hospitality employees’ green service innovative behavior through basic psychological needs satisfaction (at least for the satisfaction of autonomy and competence needs).