Do conservation and citizenship green behaviors spill over within and between work and nonwork contexts? A longitudinal study

Employee “green” behavior (EGB) is essential for organizational environmental sustainability. EGB may accumulate through pro-environmental behavior spillover, in which engaging in green behavior is associated with additional green behavior across time, behavior types, and contexts. However, the within-person spillover effects of EGB are currently not well understood. Analyzing data from N = 2,348 employees in Germany across five monthly measurement waves using random intercept cross-lagged panel models, we found that engagement in conservation green behavior in both work and nonwork contexts and citizenship green behavior in the nonwork context were positively related to the same type of behavior in the next month (i.e., temporal spillover). Additionally, conservation green behavior predicted higher citizenship green behavior at work in the next month when green organizational climate was high (i.e., behavioral spillover). Finally, conservation green behavior spilled over from the work to the nonwork context when green organizational climate was high (i.e., contextual spillover).