Green human resource management and environmental performance of hotels in South Africa: mediating and moderating role of environmental concern and green human capital

The main purpose of this study is to investigate how green human resource management (GHRM) influences environmental performance (EP) in hotels in South Africa: the mediating and moderating role of environmental concern (EC) and green human capital (GHC). The study followed the quantitative research design and a self-administer questionnaire was employed during the data collection process. Data was collected from two hundred fifteen hotels in a cross-sectional survey. The participants of this study were three-star, four-star, and five-star hotels in Gauteng province. The data was analysed using SmartPLS 4.0. The empirical findings of this study show that there is a significant positive relationship between GHRM and the EP of hotels. The study further shows that the relationship between GHRM and EP is partially mediated by EC and the relationship is also moderated by GHC at an average weight. The study has the following limitations and suggests some new study areas. First, the cross-sectional nature of the survey limits the ability to separate cause-and-effect relationships, and a longitudinal study will help to improve the results. Second, the survey was done on firms in one industry and one country. To improve the generalisability of the findings, further studies can include other industries in other countries. This paper fills a gap in the literature by exploring external business variables mediating and moderating the relationship between EC and GHC and contributes to the discussion on the contradictory results regarding the relationship between GHRM and EP.


Introduction
The hospitality sector contributes significantly to employment and economic growth in the majority of countries (United Nations World Tourism Organisation, 2021).The hospitality sector is quickly expanding in developing nations as tourism grows, nonetheless, the hotel industry is one of the industries that is significantly increasing the environmental capacity (Baloch et al., 2022;Jia & Han, 2021).However, the hospitality sector also has a detrimental impact on the environment through excessive resource use, pollution, and solid and liquid waste (Salama & Abdelsalam, 2021, Perkumienė et al., 2023).Businesses largely contribute to environmental degradation, yet they can also help to preserve the environment by their actions (Zhang et al., 2022).Businesses are under tremendous pressure nowadays to adopt sustainable practises and environmental consciousness.Government environmental rules and regulations, international environmental agreements, industry environmental management practises, and consumer pro-environmental behaviour have all put pressure on businesses to act environmentally friendly (ICC, 2020;Wang et al., 2021).
The role of GHRM in promoting and improving environmental performance, particularly in the hotel sector, has sparked interest.As a result, GHRM is critical to environmental management because HRM plays a critical part in achieving the organization's environmental goals (Pham et al., 2019).In particular, hotels ought to be interested in going green because it can enhance brand recognition and reputation, draw eco-conscious clients, lower expenses, secure environmental certifications, and adhere to legal environmental requirements (Barakagira & Paapa, 2023).At presently, stakeholders are paying close attention to environmental sustainability and as a result, businesses use a variety of tactics to fulfil their corporate social responsibility (CSR) obligations (Barakagira & Paapa, 2023).Hence, organisations that practice socially responsible behavior tend to attract potential employees.Particularly, Green HRM (GHRM) practices, such as considering and encouraging environmental sensitivity in numerous HRM functions, have a positive impact on individual perceptions (Ercantan, O. & Eyupoglu, 2022).Environment-friendly organisations have a positive social image and employees tend to prefer working in organisations that promotes green behaviors (Sobaih et al., 2020).
The concept of environmental performance has gained much attention from different scholars in the last few decades.Environmental performance has become part of the government policies to maintain the natural resources or the immediate environment and also to accomplish the United Nations sustainable development goals (UNSDGs) (Sobaih et al., 2020).Therefore, environmental performance is critical in protecting the natural environment from negative effects and maintaining the overall performance of businesses.Such negative issues include global warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, depletion of natural resources, ozone layer depletion, deforestation, and waste disposal are now recognised as major issues on a worldwide scale (Muluneh, 2021;Shivanna, 2022).The discussion of the world's environmental concerns centres on business and human activity (Manisalidis et al., 2020).

Theoretical background
To develop a good self-concept, people organise themselves into groups and identify with teams (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).According to Ashforth and Mael (1989), a person's self-concept may be influenced by their social status.According to the social identity theory, joining groups with good reputations makes people happy because it strengthens their sense of self in relation to their membership in the group (Ashforth & Mael, 1989;Tajfel & Turner, 2004).Social identity theory explains how an organisation and its personnel interact.According to some academics, staff members who embrace the company's ideals and initiatives exhibit a high sense of organisational commitment (Ashforth & Mael, 1989;Peterson, 2004).Employees who perceive corporate social responsibility initiatives favourably, for instance, frequently demonstrate a high level of organisational engagement (Brammer et al., 2007;Turker, 2009).

Empirical literature GHRM and environmental performance
GHRM is a set of activities that an organisation uses to manage its human resources with the aim of planning the implementation of environmental programs, maximizing resource utilization, reducing costs, and fostering sustainable development (Nobari, Seyedjavadin, Arbatani & Roodposhti, 2018).Literature reveals that most organisations prioritize implementing green HR practices to solve environmental issues (Baah, Opoku-Agyeman, Acquah, Agyabeng-Mensah, Afum, Faibil & Abdoulaye, 2021).Green recruitment is one of the HRM strategies that involves luring new talent into the business with environmental expertise and is conversant with the process of sustainable development (Guerci, Longini & Luzzini, 2016).Mishra (2017) showed that green recruitment, aids an organisation's efforts to decrease environmental deterioration and enhance environmental sustainability.Similarly, green training and development strives to improve employees' environmental knowledge while also adding value (Malik, Mughal, Azam, Cao, Wan, Zhu & Thurasamy, 2020).Zaid, Jaaron and Bon (2018) portrayed that green recruitment and green training are positively associated to environmental performance.Yusoff, Nejati, Kee and Amran (2018) revealed that there is a positive relationship between green HRM practices such green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green remuneration and environmental performance.This finding suggests that better outcome of environmental performance includes HRM practices that support the overall execution and administration of environmental programs and activities in organisations (Aggarwa & Agarwala, 2022).The study of Yashik and Rincy (2020) revealed that that there is a significant correlation between Green HRM and environmental performance.Yashik and Rincy (2020) also found a significant correlation between GHRM and environmental performance.This association was also supported by Zaid et al. (2018) and Mousa and Othman (2020) who came to the same conclusion that green employees contribute towards achieving environmental goals and enhance firm performance.Based on the above literature, we propose that: H1: There is a significant positive relationship between GHRM and the EP of hotels.

GHRM AND EC
Environmental concern refers to a variety of pro-environmental behaviours, such as environmental orientation or actual behaviour connected to the environment (Kumar, Dhir, Talwar, Chakraborty & Kaur, 2021).A business with high EC can respond swiftly to environmental problems (Munawar, Yousaf, Ahmed & Rehman, 2022).As a result, GHRM improves employee skills, knowledge, and competencies through green training and involvement for resolving environmental challenges (Munawar et al., 2022).Zhou, Jia and Yang (2021) found that the combination of green HR practices and management awareness lead to a more successful execution of environmental practices.A business with a low EC on the other hand, would give environmental concerns minimal attention and allocate few resources.Based on the discussion above, the following hypothesis is formed: H2: There is a significant positive relationship between GHRM and EC of hotels.
EC and the EP Kim, Kim, Choi and Phetvaroon (2019) found that numerous pro-environment actions have a positive impact on organisations' environmental performance.Shah, Ahmed, Ismail and Mozammel (2021) speculated that environmental concerns can potentially become essential in ecologically beneficial outcomes.Han, Yu and Kim (2019) also revealed that individuals who are deeply concerned about environmental problems and have knowledge on how to address environmental issues display ecologically responsible behaviour, resulting in businesses achieving environmental performance (Ngubdo & Ibrahim, 2023).As a result, the study posits the following hypothesis: H3: There is a significant positive relationship between EC and the EP of hotels.

EC mediates the relationship between GHRM and the EP
Previous research on EC mediating the relationship between GHRM and EP is sparse.According to Singh, Del, Giudice, Chierici and Graziano (2020), GHRM practices influence environmental concern which results in a positive impact on EP.Akthar (2022) found that managers' environmental concern mediates the relationship between GHRM practices and EP.The research further indicated that HR policies of organisations greatly contribute to top managements' knowledge and participation in organisational activities since the policies legitimize the managers to make defensible decisions for firms to enhance environmental performance.Kim et al. (2019) and Gilal, Ashraf, Gilal, Gilal and Channa (2019) discovered that GHRM stimulates employees to preserve the environment and participate in environmentally friendly activities.As a result of the findings, GHRM practices in environmentally friendly activities improve environmental performance.Munawar et al. (2022) reported that increased environmental awareness among employees and managers improves the influence of GHRM on environmental performance.Han et al. (2019) revealed that environmental concerns strengthen the connection between and GHRM and EP.Chaudhary (2020) advocated that environmental concern mediating mechanisms must be investigated further to understand the dynamics of the relationships between GHRM and EP.As such the following hypothesis is developed.H4: EC mediates the relationship between GHRM and EP GHC moderates the relationship between GHRM and EP Sun, Li and Ghosal (2020) define human capital as an employee's talents, wisdom, knowledge, commitments, skills, attitudes, experiences, and creativity that may be used to advance ideals and ultimately leading to competitive advantage.When facing external environmental challenges, firms use GHRM practices to generate human capital to handle environmental problems (Yong, Yusliza, Ramayah & Fawehinmi, 2020).Green human capital can be increased through organisational involvement and training.As a result, firms employ workers with green awareness to meet environmental standards, which can alter the workers' green capabilities to meet environmental goals (Li, Naz, Khan, Kusi & Murad, 2019).Additionally, performance evaluation and remuneration are essential HR practices that help businesses grow green human capital (Arshad, Abid, Contreras, Elahi & Ahmed, 2022).Yong et al. (2020) discovered that characteristics of green human capital positively impact the environmental performance of businesses.Similarly, Mansoor, Jahan and Riaz (2021) revealed that green human capital indicates a significant impact on organizations' GHRM practices, which leads to improved environmental performance.Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed: H5: GHC moderates the relationship between GHRM and the EP of hotels.

Research and Methodology
The cross-sectional survey method will be used to collect data from the respondents in a quantitative study.The survey will focus on hotel managers who are expected to know the environmental strategy and performance of their firms.The researchers developed the list of the hotels that will participate in the survey using the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa.The simple random sampling method will be used to select hotels graded as three, four, and five star by the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa.
In comparison to small hotels, upscale hotels are more likely to engage in environmental practices.The study area included Pretoria and Johannesburg.The two cities are located in the Gauteng Province.The two cities have a sizeable number of hotels.The researchers will contact the management of the selected hotel through phone calls and emails to request for their participation in the survey.Afterwards, the questionnaire depicting the purpose of the study and a covering letter will be sent to the manager of the hotels that agreed to participate in the survey.Two trained field agents will assist in the data collection process from participating hotels using the self-administered questionnaire method.The emails and phone numbers of the participants will be obtained during questionnaire distribution, and reminders will be sent weekly to request for the completion of questionnaire.The questionnaire contained a cover letter that explained the aim of the study and anonymity and confidentiality.The questionnaire was examined by two experts in the area of sustainability and strategy.The questionnaire has four sections.These are (1) demographic variables, (2) GHRM, (3) EP, (4) EC and ( 5) GHC.The study will adopt the Partial Least Square Structural Equation modelling for analysis.

Measures
Measures: Green human resource management (GHRM) Eleven questions adopted from (Shafaei et al., 2019) were used to measure GHRM.The questions were based on the five-point Likert scale with 1 = "Strongly disagree" and 5 = "Strongly agree".
Environmental Performance (EP) Eight questions adopted from (Suliman et al., 2023) were used to measure EP.The questions were based on the five-point Likert scale with 1 = "Strongly disagree" and 5 = "Strongly agree".
Measures: Environmental concern (EC) Seven questions adopted from (Cruz & Manata, 2020) were used to measure EC.The questions were based on the five-point Likert scale with 1 = "Strongly disagree" and 5 = "Strongly agree".
Measures: Green human capital (GHC) Four questions adopted from (Yong et al, 2020) were used to measure GHC.The questions were based on the five-point Likert scale with 1 = "Strongly disagree" and 5 = "Strongly agree".

Demographic respondents
A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed in the actual survey, and 215 usable questionnaires were returned.As depicted by Table 1, the majority of the respondents were male in the 31-40 age group.In addition, the hotels that participated in the survey had a four-star grading and have been in existence for between 6-10 years.Furthermore, majority of hotel employees have been employed for 6-10 years and with an educational level of diploma/degree.

Discriminant Validity Test
Discriminant validity measures how much a construct differs experimentally from other components in the structural model (Hair, 2021).According to Fornell and Larcker (1981), the average variance of each construct should be compared to the squared interconstruct correlation (as a measure of shared variation) of that construct and all other structurally examined components.The shared variance of all model constructs should not be bigger than their AVEs.Fornell-Larcker and the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio criterion were employed to test discriminant validity.According to Fornell and Larcker (1981), "the square root of AVE of each variable must exceed the correlations between the constructs and other constructs in the model" (Fang et al., 2021).This study's findings show that all bold and italic values preserved were greater than inter-correlation variables, implying that variables have appropriate validity (see Table 2).The results of the heterotrait-monotrait ratio for assessing discriminant validity are shown in Table 3.This ratio is preferred by editors and reviewers since it demonstrates that there are no multicollinearity difficulties (Henseler et al., 2015).Our study's results were kept between 0.403 to 0.796, which is far from the acceptable threshold of 0.85 (Hair et al., 2019).We used bootstrapping to generate the path coefficient and their significance level.Table 4 demonstrates all of the hypotheses (direct, indirect, and moderation) were supported.The decision related to a particular relationship was made based on the criterion (p-value<0.05)two-tailed test (see Table 4).Among direct relationships, GHRM was found to strongly influence environmental performance (β = 0.516), which means that if there is a single unit change in GHRM, environmental performance will change by 51.6%.The study used the goodness of fit test (GOF) to determine if the model adequately explains the empirical data.The values of the GOF range from 0 to 1 with 0.10 considered as small, 0.25 medium and 0.36 large.The GOF value obtained is 0.067, which is less than the acceptable threshold of 0.08 (Hair et al., 2019).

Mediation analysis
Regarding the mediating analysis, we used the widely employed (Qalati et al., 2021) and suggested (Hair et al., 2016;Hair et al., 2019) test called variance accounted for (VAF) test.If the VAF value is retained 80%, it is considered as no, partial, and full mediation, respectively (Hair et al., 2019).Our study VAF value is 32.84%; thus, we conclude that an EC partially mediates the relationship between GHRM and environmental performance.

Moderation analysis
Regarding the f 2 values, Cohen (1988) stated that if the value is 0.02, 0.15, and 0.35, it is considered as weak, moderate, and strong, respectively.This research f 2 value is 0.0636; thus, we conclude that an GHC has a weak moderation effect on the link between GHRM and an environmental performance.

Discussion
The study examined the effect of GHRM on the EP of hotels.In addition, the study examined the mediating effect of EC in the relationship between GHRM and EP.Furthermore, the study examined the moderating effect of GHC in the relationship between GHRM and EP.The results indicated that GHRM and EP are significantly positively related, which supports hypotheses one.Lopez-Gamero et al. (2009) confirmed the essential role that proactive environmental management, termed GHRM, plays in intensifying an organisation's environmental performance.These results are consistent with other studies (Gilal et al.,2019;Mousa & Othman, 2020;Paillé et al., 2014) and valid for both developing and developed countries.Thus, the study results validate that GHRM practices promoting eco-friendly activities, including hiring and rewarding staff members, can contribute to an enhanced organisational environmental performance.The findings of the study indicate that GHRM and EC are significantly positively related in support of hypotheses two.The findings are supported by past research (Woo & Kang, 2021) argues that modern organizations with a strategic approach to reward and encouragement of employees provide conditions for the development of eco-friendly initiatives.Therefore, top managers in organizations can consider rewards and compensations for employees as potential tools to support the environmental activities of the organization.Reward systems for contributions made by employees in environment management plans can be allocated in the forms of salary increase, cash incentives and bonuses, while non-monetary rewards are introduction of people in official events.In addition, appreciation of green efforts may include sabbaticals, special leave, and gifts to employees and their family members (Aishwarya & Thahriani, 2020).The findings indicate that EC and EP are positively related in support of hypothesis three.
These findings are supported by past research by Barakagira and Paapa (2023)

Conclusions
The study aimed to investigate the effect of GHRM on the EP of hotels and the mediating and moderating role of EC and GHC using the social identify theory.The findings of this study provide valuable insights into the positive relationship between Green HRM practices and the environmental performance of hotels.The implementation of Green HRM practices contributes significantly to reducing the environmental impact of hotels through various mechanisms such as eco-friendly training programs, employee involvement in environmental initiatives, and the use of green recruitment and retention strategies.Additionally, the results highlight the importance of employees' environmental concern and green human capital in driving the adoption and effectiveness of Green HRM practices.
These findings emphasize the need for hotels to prioritize the development and integration of green HRM strategies to enhance their environmental performance and sustainability in the coming years.GHRM practices, such as training and development programs, employee involvement, and performance appraisal, have been found to positively impact a hotel's environmental performance.Furthermore, environmental concern among hotel employees and managers has been identified as a key driver for the implementation of GHRM practices.Finally, the concept of green human capital has been introduced as a critical factor that influences the effectiveness of GHRM practices.Overall, this research highlights the importance of GHRM in promoting sustainability in the hotel industry.Hotels need to develop effective green marketing strategies, including improvising green advertising and green label.The study has the following limitations and suggests some new study areas.First, the cross-sectional nature of the survey limits the ability to separate cause-and-effect relationships, and a longitudinal study will help to improve the results.Second, the survey was done on firms in one industry and one country.To improve the generalisability of the findings, further studies can include other industries in other countries.In addition, other studies can examine if environmental quality awareness can play an indirect role in the link between EC and GHC in hotels.

Table 4 :
Hypotheses testing and strength of the model who found that hotels with a strong environmental concern were more likely to engage in resource conservation, waste management, and energy efficiency initiatives.Similarly, a more recent study byXess et al. (2021)observed a positive relationship between environmental concern and the adoption of eco-friendly technologies in hotels.The findings confirm the mediating effects of EC in the relationship between GHRM and EP in support of hypotheses four.The results are consistent with earlier research a study conducted byKuo et al. (2022), it was found that employees' environmental concern mediated the relationship between GHRM practices and environmental performance in the manufacturing sector.Similarly, another study by Baek andKim (2018)highlighted the mediating role of environmental concern in the relationship between GHRM practices and environmental performance in the service industry.Some studies have found a positive association between the implementation of GHRM practices and improved environmental performance(Carballo-Penela et al., 2023).For instance, Adeel et al. (2022) found that organizations that incorporate GHRM practices, such as employee involvement and training, are more likely to achieve higher levels of environmental performance.Conversely, other studies have found no significant relationship between GHRM and environmental performance(Fawehinmi et al.,  2020, Xie & Lau, 2023).The findings confirm the moderating effects of GHC in the relationship between GHRM and EP in support of hypotheses five.The results are consistent with earlier research a study conducted byNureen et al. (2023)found that organizations that adopt GHC practices experience improved environmental performance due to the enhanced employee awareness and commitment to sustainability.Additionally, a study by Ma (2021) highlights that GHC significantly increases the positive impact of GHRM on environmental performance through its emphasis on employee training and development focused on sustainability practices.