The perceived ethicality of promoting employee workplace energy conservation for a competitiveness reason

Literature of cleaner production demonstrates that the conduction of pro-environmental behaviour individually at work contributes to the improvement of an organisation's environmental performance. However, employees' intentions to engage in pro-environmental behaviour are susceptible to their perceived ethicality towards organisational behaviours, such as workplace green initiatives. An ongoing issue is that whether symbolic motives, particularly, the competitiveness motive, to PEB is perceived ethical by employees to perform at the workplace context. With a specific focus on that matter, this study aims to examine employees' perceived ethicality of promoting workplace energy conservation based on a competitiveness (motivational) message as an intervention initiated by the organisation. Results from survey data (N = 200) indicate that promoting workplace energy conservation through a competitiveness message leads to a lower perceived ethicality of message than via a control message. Also, the competitiveness message did not significantly affect employees' behavioural intention towards workplace energy conservation. Notably, employees' attitude towards message significantly affected their workplace energy conservation intention.