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 empirical evidence on psychological mechanisms linking decarbonization pressure to employee green behavior, extending psychological contract theory.

🏢実務担当者:Highlights the importance of fostering environmental contract fulfillment and green skills, not just relying on regulatory pressure to drive employee green behavior.

🏛政策担当者:Suggests that transition policies should include employee participation and green skill development to ensure behavioral embedding of low-carbon changes.

The transition toward a low-carbon and sustainable green economy requires energy-sector organizations to respond not only through technological modernization, regulatory compliance, and low-carbon investment, but also through employee-level behavioral adaptation. However, the micro-level mechanisms through which decarbonization and regulatory pressures are translated into employee green behavior remain insufficiently understood. Addressing this gap, this study introduces carbon anxiety as a transition-specific construct reflecting employees’ perception of organizational tension, uncertainty, and pressure associated with carbon reduction, emissions accountability, carbon reporting, and the operational consequences of decarbonization. Building on the psychological contract perspective, the article develops and tests a moderated mediation model in which psychological contract fulfillment for the environment mediates the relationships between carbon anxiety, perceived regulatory pressure, and employee green behavior, while pro-environmental consciousness strengthens the effect of environmental contract fulfillment on green behavior. The study is based on a cross-sectional quantitative design using an anonymous CAWI survey of 857 employees from Poland’s energy sector, including conventional energy companies, renewable energy firms, electricity and heat distribution operators, transmission entities, and organizations providing services and technologies for the sector. The hypotheses are tested using structural equation modeling, with additional diagnostic and robustness checks ac-counting for demographic, organizational, and subsectoral differences. The findings show that both carbon anxiety and perceived regulatory pressure are positively associated with psychological contract fulfillment for the environment, which in turn predicts employee green behavior. The results further indicate that this behavioral mechanism is stronger among employees with higher pro-environmental consciousness. The study contributes to research on the low-carbon transition and sustainable green economy by identifying relational and behavioral micro-foundations through which decarbonization and regulatory pressures become enacted inside energy organizations. It also extends psychological contract theory by situating environmental contract fulfillment in a carbon-intensive, regulation-driven sectoral transformation. Practically, the findings suggest that energy companies and policymakers should not rely on transition pressure alone, but should foster credible environmental commitments, green skills, and employee participation mechanisms that enable low-carbon organizational change to become embedded in everyday work practices.

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