Greening Work, Sustaining People: How and When Green Psychological Climate Relates to Employee Flourishing via Work Meaningfulness and Work Engagement—Implications for Sustainable Development in Hospitality

This study examines how green psychological climate is associated with employee flourishing in five-star hotels by investigating the sequential roles of work meaningfulness and work engagement and the boundary conditions of responsible leadership and psychological detachment from work. Data were collected through a cross-sectional survey of 693 full-time, non-managerial employees working in five-star hotels across major tourism regions in Saudi Arabia and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that green psychological climate is positively associated with employee flourishing, work meaningfulness, and work engagement. Work meaningfulness and engagement also form a positive sequential indirect pathway linking green psychological climate with flourishing. The green psychological climate–meaningfulness association was stronger at higher levels of responsible leadership, whereas the engagement–flourishing association was stronger at higher levels of psychological detachment; however, both interaction effects were small in incremental magnitude. Corresponding differences were also observed in the conditional sequential indirect associations. The study contributes to sustainable development research by extending green psychological climate beyond environmentally specific outcomes and linking environmental organizational conditions with human sustainability through theoretically ordered indirect associations involving meaningfulness and engagement. It further identifies responsible leadership and psychological detachment as distinct boundary conditions associated with variation in these relationships. Practically, hotels should align environmental initiatives with responsible supervisory practices, meaningful work conditions, employee engagement, and adequate recovery opportunities. Overall, the findings highlight the joint relevance of environmental responsibility and the sustainable functioning of employees to hospitality sustainability.