Carbon Anxiety, Regulatory Pressure and Employee Green Behavior in the Low-Carbon Transition: Evidence from Poland’s Energy Sector

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a theoretically grounded model linking transition pressures to employee green behavior via psychological contract fulfillment.

🏢実務担当者:Highlights the importance of clear environmental commitments and employee participation to translate regulatory pressure into green behavior.

🏛政策担当者:Suggests that regulation alone may be insufficient; internal organizational factors like employee perceptions matter for decarbonization implementation.

The low-carbon transition depends not only on technologies and regulation, but also on how employees interpret and enact organizational environmental commitments. This study examines whether carbon anxiety—employees’ perception of organization-focused uncertainty and insufficient preparedness regarding carbon accounting, emissions reduction, reporting, and operational adaptation—and perceived regulatory pressure are associated with employee green behavior (EGB) through psychological contract fulfillment for the environment (PCFE), and whether pro-environmental consciousness strengthens the PCFE–EGB association. Using a cross-sectional computer-assisted web interview survey of 857 employees in Poland’s energy sector, the proposed second-stage moderated mediation model was tested with structural equation modeling and bootstrap analysis. Carbon anxiety and regulatory pressure were positively associated with psychological contract fulfillment for the environment, which was positively associated with employee green behavior. Pro-environmental consciousness strengthened the psychological contract fulfillment for the environment–behavior relationship, and both conditional indirect associations increased at higher pro-environmental consciousness levels. The model explained 33.2% of the variance in psychological contract fulfillment for the environment and 37.1% in employee green behavior; the main pattern remained stable across robustness and subsector analyses. The observed associations support psychological contract fulfillment for the environment as a theoretically specified relational mechanism linking transition pressures with the employee-level implementation of decarbonization. Given the cross-sectional design, the results indicate associations rather than causal effects. Organizations should translate transition pressures into credible environmental commitments, workforce capabilities, transparent communication, and meaningful employee participation.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3390/su18147027first seen 2026-07-13 05:40:34