The Impact Of Pay For Performance On Employee Green Behavior:A Conservation Of Resource Perspective

Psychology scholars has been discussing the relationship between monetary incentives and intrinsic motivation for a long time.Mainly driven by intrinsic motivation,green behavior can be affected by monetary incentives.However,few researchers have paid attention to the relationship between monetary incentive and workplace green behavior.Pay for performance is a commonly used incentive system in organizations,but the extensive discussion around the relationship between pay for performance and employees’ intrinsic motivation has not reached agreement yet.Based on conservation of resource theory,the present research regarded pay for performance the work event that elicited both resource gain and loss,and hypothesized an inverted U-shaped relationship between pay for performance and employee green behavior,as well as the moderating effect of scarcity mindset,and examined the hypotheses through an interview(Study 1a),a multi-source and multi-wave field survey(Study 1b)and an experiment(Study 2).In Study 1a,I interviewed 30 full-time employees,and thematic results preliminarily indicated the potential links between pay for performance and employee green behavior.In Study 1b,I collected multi-wave and multisource data from 212 employee-colleague dyads and results demonstrated the inverted U-shaped relationship between pay for performance and employee green behavior.Study 2 then replicated the results and examined the moderating effect of scarcity mindset by a 3(intensity of pay for performance: low,medium vs.high level)×2(scarcity mindset: control vs.scarcity group)between-subjects experiment.Using data from 225 full-time employees,Study 2illustrated that only under the scarcity condition,participants’ intentions for green behavior in the medium-level pay for performance intensity were significantly higher than those either in the lowor high-level group.The present research expanded the application of conservation of resource theory by anchoring the outcomes of pay for performance,explored the relationship between monetary incentives and employee green behavior,and pointed out the conditioning effect of scarcity mindset.Through these results,I hope to provide theoretical guidance for organizations to facilitate employee green behavior,improve corporate green performance and promote sustainable development.