Greening the Workforce: A Strategic Way to Spur the Environmental Q2 Performance in the Hotel Industry

The study examines the effect of green human resource management (GHRM) on the environmental performance of hotels. It also investigates the crucial role of pro-environmental psychological capital, psychological green climate, and pro-environmental behaviors to enhance the environmental performance. The target population consisted of green hotel employees. Data collected using a survey questionnaire from 374 employees were subjected to partial least squares structural equation modeling for analysis. As per the findings, green human resource practices (green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment) are significant predictors for pro-environmental psychological capital, which further contributes positively toward the psychological green climate. It was also found that the psychological green climate is positively related to pro-environmental behaviors. Findings revealed that employees’ pro-environmental behaviors play a significant role to enhance the environmental performance of hotels. Moreover, it is indicated that green HRM practices indirectly contribute to environmental performance through pro-environmental psychological capital, psychological green climate, and pro-environmental behaviors. This study is one of the few attempts to integrate the green HRM practices with pro-environmental psychological capital, green climate, and pro-environmental behaviors to predict the environmental performance in hotels. It examines the moderating role of environmental consciousness that was almost ignored. This study is important for hotels that are trying to adopt green HR practices. It provided several suggestions to the practitioners while making the strategy to promote environmental performance with the help of green HR practices through various ways. It also assists the hotel management to enhance pro-environmental psychological capital by promoting green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment for the promotion of environmental performance.


INTRODUCTION
The hotel industry has become more cognizant about its impression on the environment as well as on society across the globe (Goldstein and Primlani, 2012) because it can influence dramatically on civilization, culture, economy, and environment (Sohail et al., 2020). The hospitality industry is considered the backbone of the services industry and earns profit through its conversion services (Melissen et al., 2016). Since the hospitality industry is more labor intensive and provides employment to a greater number of people (around 4 million jobs), therefore its contribution is highly significant in the services sector (Kianto et al., 2010). Formerly, the hotel sector contributed 3% to GDP, and recently its growth rate increased by 7.1% in 2019. This growth highlighted its thriving stage in Pakistan (Javed and Hussain, 2018). According to Javed and Hussain (2018), among the total investment of Pakistan, 9.1% of investment was from the tourism industry. It brings favorable and productive outcomes for the economy. As stated in a recent report, the tourism industry is currently contributing 9.3% in GDP globally (AlKahtani et al., 2021).
Despite the notable growth of the hotel industry across the decades, hotels are bound to follow eco-friendly actions and show an accountable attitude toward the environment. Comparatively, hotels are more forced to strictly comply with environmentrelated regulations because they are directly answerable for the secretion of environment-associated substances, for instance, disposal of water, energy, and wastes to nature (Graci and Kuehnel, 2011;Nisar et al., 2021a;Khaliq et al., 2022). Hotels are overstretched to take notice of their environmental performance caused due to their waste emission. In several ways, the hotel industry may emanate wastes and cause environmental issues. Various cases are reported in this realm regarding waste production in Vietnam (Hoang et al., 2017) and Malaysia as well. According to a recent study, it is proclaimed that the growth of the tourism and hotel industry also signals a serious menace to the environment if its negative impact hanged on nature is not properly controlled (Abdulaali et al., 2019). Keeping in view the sensitivity of the hotel industry in terms of environmental concerns, authors have concentrated their focus on how hotels may embrace environmental performance.
Studies in the arena of the hospitality sector entailed that to stay in competitive contention, human-resource management practices are a rare plus cost-effective strategy among all business strategies. It is also evident that green initiatives have become a source of attraction and retaining employees (Renwick et al., 2013) and customers (Chen, 2011) as well as to influence the organizational performance (Yafi et al., 2021). In addition, it is explained by Jabbour et al. (2008) that the environmental performance of the organization could be improved by using green HRM activities including norms, training, coordination, considering environmental objectives, and non-monetary rewards system. Similarly, monetary rewards can stimulate employees to be environment reconcilable. Consequently, the result of these activities is a decrease in operational expenses and an increment in environmental performance (Kim et al., 2020). Hilton (a chain of hotels in Pakistan) is an example that has maintained its functional goals and strategies, green programs, and progress monitoring mechanism. It is evident that during 2009-2014, its overall water and energy consumption remain 14.1-14.5% globally. In addition, Marriot (chain of international hotels) is another example in which green activities are stimulating toward a safe environment (Kim et al., 2020).
The relationship between green HR practices and environmental performance has attracted modern research (Umrani et al., 2020;Yusoff et al., 2020;Jerónimo et al., 2020;Roscoe et al., 2019;Saeed et al., 2019). Jerónimo et al. (2020) explored the role of green staffing, green compensation, and green training and motivation with demographic factors of age and gender in Portugal. Another study also measured the impact of green HR practices on environmental performance with Malaysian respondents of the hotel industry (Yusoff et al., 2020). Likewise, Umrani et al. (2020) analyzed the ways through which green HRM practices can be beneficial in enhancing environmental performance with mediating effect of environmental responsibility and concerns using a hotel industry sample from Pakistan. Another study found green HRM practices, employees' pro-environmental behavior, proenvironmental psychological capital, and environmental values in multiple sectors of Pakistan (Saeed et al., 2019). Next, Roscoe et al. (2019) predominantly investigated green HRM practices in manufacturing organizations of China. All of the aforesaid research are on the phenomena of GHRM, green behavior, and eco-friendly performance and strengthen the landscape of our study. Despite the presence of green literature in various sectors, we still need to deepen our understanding of the antecedents of environmental performance in the hotel industry because of the dire need for compliance with environmental regulations. The extant work is premeditated to cover the theoretical gaps that are prevalent in the green HRM literature. Although HRM practices have a dominant influence in creating environmental outcomes, few studies have been conducted toward the bonding of HRM practices and environmental performance specifically in the "hospitality" context (Kim et al., 2019;Nisar et al., 2021b). More rigorous research is needed on the studied variables from psychological perspectives to deeply understand the complex nature of proenvironmental behaviors. This study drastically contributes to existing studies while incorporating recent variables of proenvironmental psychological capital and environmental consciousness, which have not been tapped by previous studies.
Green HRM policies generate green employees who are capable to understand and practice green activities (Saeed et al., 2019). Scholars identified that the execution of green HRM is implied by HRM practices such as forecasting, hiring process, training and development, remuneration, and evaluation to accomplish green objectives (Yafi et al., 2021). Authors highlighted that the hotel industry is still reluctant to adopt environmental enhancement technologies because of which they are still facing hurdles in this realm. Moreover, Chan (2021) investigated that in earlier environmental studies, the focus was on other sectors so the hotel industry was neglected except for fewer empirical shreds of evidence. Furthermore Anwar et al. (2020) argued that due to the scarcity of research on performance, there is a need for special consideration toward this phenomenon. In the green HRM domain, in-depth studies have been conducted on environmental management structure application, organizational-citizenship behavior for the environment (Tang et al., 2018), intrinsic motivation, psychological climate (Dumont et al., 2017), proenvironmental psychological capital (Saeed et al., 2019), and other different factors. However, the streamline of inquiries regarding the amalgamation of green HRM practices with ecological outcomes (psychological green climate, proenvironmental psychological capital, pro-environment behaviors, and environmental performance) has been ignored in previous studies. Previously, environmental consciousness has been discussed from the consumer perspective. The variable of environmental consciousness is not studied widely in the area of "green HRM" and "environment management". Therefore, this study responds to the call of research (Saeed et al., 2019), which highlighted these gaps and emphasized to further explore the moderating part of environmental consciousness to fulfill the dearth of understanding in the context of organizational environmental studies. Thus, this research-based work inspects the moderating effect of environmental consciousness in the given context, which is a unique feature of this study.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Social Cognitive Theory "Social cognitive" and "resource-based view" are the fundamental theories for this study. "Social cognitive theory" consisted of three core gears such as "environment, person, and behavior", whereas proficiencies, knowledge, and attitude of an individual generate optimistic actions. In addition, the affirmative collaboration between one and the environment designs the individualistic behavior. Greenhuman-resource-management practices polish up the workforces' abilities plus attitude, and then experiences too, and additionally lift the positively acted employees headed for pro-environmental behaviors. Besides, efficacious behavior directs the circumstances toward environmental performance. One owns a high level of green intellectual capital when he/she is appointed, then taught, and arranges for green disciplinary ethics and executes pro-environmental behavior. As far as resource-based view is concerned, Penrose (1959) presented theoretical revolution by introducing RBV, emphasizing the significance of internal resources for firms' growth (Hameed et al., 2021), which is further explained by Barney (1991) through adding the strength of insubstantial resources as strategic-competitive means and by adding their quality, "rare, valuable and impossible to imitate". While linking the recently mentioned theory (RBV) with our research work, we found few worthwhile studies like Wernerfelt (1984) and Wright et al. (2001). They have explained how influentially SHRM is linked with RBV theory which support our theoretical framework (see Figure 1). Resource-based view is proved to be a magnifying glass through which practitioners and investigators can better understand and manage HRM strategically, in the same vein can go with green HRM practices.
The social cognitive theory proposes that a range of individualized environs and behaving variables excite proenvironmental behavior, which eventually mends the environmental performance. In addition, pro-environmental psychological capital is capabilities added with knowledge and practical experience of people regarding making an eco-friendly environment to nurture positive behavior outcome; for instance, when the individual grasps understanding, potentials, and skills related to environmental drive, he/she further involves in psychological green climate and pro-environmental behaviors. Environmental performance is likely attained while persons experience solid associational favors and fewer obstacles in shape of green human resource management practices (Bandura, 1999;Sawitri et al., 2015;Singh et al., 2020).

Green Human Resource Management Practices and Pro-Environmental Psychological Capital
Employers' ability to attract the human capital equipped with the innate ability and desire of environmental compliance has always been a concern of critical nature (Jabbour et al., 2008). Recruitment and selection in the context of the greening convention is a preliminary step in the process of the green HRM cycle (Shafaei et al., 2020). Previous empirical work on the subject matter (Renwick et al. 2013) has bifurcated the green recruitment and selection in three distinct aspects, i.e., the degree of penitential candidates' green awareness, employer branding supplemented with greening convention, and the specific green criterion to attract the pool of potential applicants. Each of these established aspects of green recruitment and selection is logically linked to the other aspects of the individual and organizational level. For instance, at the individual level, the degree of candidates' green awareness is merely a reflection of candidates' personality features like green-consciousness, green-conscientiousness, and green-agreeableness. Environmental laden consciousness of staff at the workplace triggers them to acquire environmental knowledge compatible with their work process-a catalyst for the environmental performance of the organization (Perron et al., 2006). Second, green employer branding helps the potential candidates to evaluate the organizational green values with their own environmental values, which in turn supports them to judge as to how the employees are being treated in the organization. Hence, green employer branding attracts a reasonable pool of potential applicants (Jabbour et al., 2013). Third, as suggested by Renwick et al. (2013) as an integral part of the evaluation criteria, candidates should be judged against the degree of environmental knowledge. Pro-environmental psychological capital according to Norton et al. (2012Norton et al. ( , 2015 is "what an employee understands and perceives about firm's guidelines, processes and practices regarding environmental sustainability". H1: Green recruitment and selection is significantly attached to pro-environmental psychological capital. Sammalisto and Brorson (2008) affirmed that training can enhance employees' environmental knowledge, skills, and awareness. Organizational training programs on environmental knowledge increase employees' pro-environmental behavior. Such programs at the organizational level build an understanding of environmental protection among employees, and resultantly trigger them to acquire knowledge on antecedents of environmental pollution and their respective remedies (Haider and Kayani, 2021). Observance of environment-friendly corporate practices and training triggers employees' proenvironmental behavior (Dias-Sardinha and Reijnders, 2001). Literature suggests that corporate trainings enriched with green environmental contents can increase the likelihood of employees' initiatives toward a healthy environment.
H2: Green training and development is significantly tied up to pro-environmental psychological capital.
Green performance management and appraisal process remains a systematic process of employees' performance evaluation related to the management of the environment (Jabbour et al., 2008). Although balancing metrics has been a well-known methodology of measuring environmental performance management (Jackson et al., 2011), there is a heavy criticism on the face of the metrics balancing technique for not being effective (Kuo et al., 2012). Considering the dearth of need for environmental performance management practices, the selection of standard and industry-driven practices has been a priority for the organizations. The argument of Hermann et al. (2007) is of central importance for the efficacious employment of environmental performance appraisal management. They are of the view that green performance management should be part of a formal performance appraisal system wherein employees are rewarded (monetarily and non-monetarily) according to their performance during a certain performance appraisal cycle. Therefore, the inclusion of several key environmental performance indicators in the formal appraisal of employees is more than logical. Such a comprehensively administered performance appraisal system is most likely to build a proenvironmental psychological capital.
H3: Green performance management and appraisal is significantly associated to pro-environmental psychological capital.
When employees are empowered to take part voluntarily in environmental performance management, they are more inclined to identify the current and potential environmental risks and their fixed strategy accordingly (Renwick et al., 2013). There are several empirical evidences that employees' volunteer involvement in organizational environmental performance management improves the overall environmental management system (Tseng et al., 2013). For example, measuring the degree of employees' involvement in green practices and initiatives has been possible after the appearance of the work. They offered a five-point criterion for the purpose, which includes green vision, climate, communication channel, practices, and involvement. Employees' participation in green management practices is more likely to be enhanced through green activities (Vallaster, 2017). Empowering employees on the subject matter is associated to the provisioning of opportunities to the employees for quality enhancement of existing management practices and to solve other environmental issues as well, which in turn builds a proenvironmental psychological capital. There are consistent evidence that climate has an affirmative relationship with employees' behavior (Schneider et al., 2013). It is also a wellestablished fact that green environment-laden strategies and policies of the organizations supplement a notion of environmentally responsible firm to the stakeholder, which in turn builds pro-environmental psychological capital. Hence, drawing on the preceding evidence, we hypothesize that H4: Green empowerment is significantly associated to proenvironmental psychological capital.

Pro-Environmental Psychological Capital and Psychological Green Climate
The pro-environmental psychological climate is well defined through the following statements: "an employee's perceptions as well as elucidation of administrative rules, procedures, and exercises regarding environmental performance (Saeed et al., 2019). Such environmental strategies support to build a proenvironmental psychological capital. This chain continues till the development of a psychological climate". The literature further supports that "pro-environmental psychological capital is merely a reflection of individual values concerning the environment, and these environment-laden values are the significant determinants of psychological green climate" (Dumont et al., 2017). These statements also reflected that pro-environmental psychological capital facilitates the interconnection between green HRM and the psychological green climate. Based on these evidences, we hypothesize that H5: Pro-environmental psychological capital is significantly in relation with psychological green climate.

Psychological Green Climate and Pro-Environmental Behavior
The psychologists of the environmental domain have acknowledged that contextual factor such as psychological climate has a relationship with green behavior (Bamberg and Möser, 2007;Littleford et al., 2014). The subject of organizational behavior has long been acknowledged by the fact that institutional "culture and climate" are the momentous forecasters of employees' attitudes and behavior (Schneider et al., 2013). Also, when these worker's attitudes and behaviors go toward environmental sustainability, these will be known as employee's pro-environmental behaviors (Ones and Dilchert, 2012).
Organizational climate has been distinct as "employees' allocated perceptions and interpretations of organizational SOP's, the processes that convert policies into strategies, and the predictable practices rewarded by the organization" (Norton et al., 2014). Psychological climate shapes employees' behavior (Rousseau, 1985). In contrast, psychological green climate is the organizational supportive environment that compels workers to get information and follow ecological practices (Naz et al., 2021). Specific to the current study's context, previous scholarships have acknowledged that green psychological climate is clearly interconnected with employee green behavior in a positive manner (Dumont et al., 2017). Drawing on these arguments, we expect the existence of a relationship between green psychological capital and employees' pro-environmental behavior. This is because personnel are more intended to exhibit behaviors having the best compatibility with organizational policies, procedures, and practices (Schneider et al., 2013). Therefore, in view of the aforementioned arguments, we hypothesize that H6: Psychological green climate is significantly related to proenvironmental behavior.

Pro-Environmental Behavior and Environmental Performance
Employees' pro-environmental behavior has a relationship with the environmental performance of an organization (Perron et al., 2006). Previous scholarships have confirmed that employees' volunteer behavior improves organizational performance (Podsakoff and MacKenzie, 1997). The empirical work of Walz and Niehoff (2000) has concluded that employees' citizenship behavior impacts organizational performance. Nielsen et al. (2009) performed a content analysis of more than 35 studies on the subject and established that employees' volunteer behavior has a positive relationship with firm performance. Daily et al. (2009) argued that employees' environmental initiatives directly impact the environmental performance of the organization. On the same line, Rasool et al. (2019) confirmed that employees' eco-friendly actions improve environmental performance. Drawing on these empirical evidences, we hypothesize that H7: Employees' pro-environmental behavior is significantly connected to environmental performance.

Moderating Role of Environmental Consciousness
Specifically, "environmental consciousness" is a psychological concept of how much an individual has familiarity about emotional and behavioral stance regarding environmental safety (Khrushch and Karpiuk, 2021). Environmental consciousness is a term characterized by human efforts for the inclusion of ecological well-being into the practical life; narrowing the concept a bit more, environmental consciousness is a state wherein individuals strive to develop the habit of good treatment with nature or the environment (Zhang and Sun, 2021). Environmental consciousness determines the individuals' pro-environmental behavior (Zelezny and Schultz, 2000) and also refrains the individuals from performing anti-environment friendly practices (Grunert and Juhl, 1995), which in turn fuels the organizational interest to increase the environmental performance through delivering environment-friendly products (Pudaruth et al., 2015). These arguments lead us to assume that environmental consciousness regulates the interrelationship of pro-environmental behavior and environmental performance. Hence, our hypothetical statement is H8: Environmental consciousness moderates on the relationship between pro-environmental behavior and environmental performance.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES
Sampling Criteria, Design, and Statistics Data were collected from three-star, four-star, and five-star hotels in three main big, famous, and densely populated cities of Pakistan, namely, Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad located in Punjab province. These cities were selected because hotels located here are under Pakistan Hotels and Restaurants Act 1976, strictly governed and administered by the authorities (Punjab food authority), and were issued showcase notices and imposed heavy fines in case of violations of stated parameters. Fifty hotels were targeted from the selected cities, and target population was almost 1,150. The elements under examination in the present study were the managerial employees, and the unit of analysis for this study is individual. Following the criterion proposed by Krejcie and Morgan (1970), a sample size of 291 was deemed appropriate. G*Power was used to confirm the sample size. Power analysis of G*Power was employed to estimate the appropriate sample size based on given statistical parameters (Faul et al., 2007). By using four predictors, the medium effect size convention of 0.15, and a significance level of 0.05, an appropriate sample size was calculated, and this study obtained a sample size of 265 at the statistical power of 0.95.
The researchers had collected data from a "management cadre of five-star hotels" that occupied at least 2 years' experience to increase the adequacy of data. The respondents were also intrigued whether they received any kind of hotel training or educational programs for environmental safety measures to assess whether those hotels were implementing green HRM practices on their premises. Since then, researchers aimed to collect data only from those hotels that were introducing green HRM practices through using cross-sectional design methodology. The presented scholarship considered a hotel as a "green hotel" in case it obtained any sort of green hotel authorization. Several steps had to be completed before the data could be collected. A letter of authorization for data collection and a request letter for the employees list were submitted to the human resource departments of selected hotels. The purpose of the study was explained in a written introductory and approval letter that was sent to the concerned authorities of the selected hotels, and after their formal acceptance, data were collected by using the personally administered survey method. Hotel managers were communicated about the purpose of the survey and anonymity and confidentially of data were promised; thus, they voluntarily joined in the self-administered survey and retorted to the queries. Hotels were visited to collect the responses after having an appointment with the HR departments. Respondents were informed about the purpose of survey, and surveyors were hired to approach them for data collection.
Frontiers in Environmental Science | www.frontiersin.org March 2022 | Volume 10 | Article 841205 5 The judgmental sampling procedure was used for data collection. The rationale behind using purposive selecting is that hotels having high ratings correlate to their promise to adhere to quality standards, performance excellence, wellorganized and steadfast people equipped with formalized managerial levels, outstanding operational quality, and above all treasured customers service and performance. The questionnaires were given to the respondents once they consented to participate in the survey. The completed surveys have to be submitted to the appropriate authority by the respondents. In addition, the HR department was responsible for putting all completed questionnaires into the stamped envelope provided by the researchers. The questionnaires were distributed and collected between June and September 2021. In total, 670 questionnaires were distributed and 410 arrived back with a 61% reply rate, but 374 were found ineffective for further analysis due to missing values.

Measures
Four dimensions of green HRM practices are 1) green recruitment and selection, 2) green training and development, 3) green performance management and appraisal, along with 4) green empowerment. Constructed on a latest literature by Tang et al. (2018), three items were used for green recruitment and selection, four items were used for green training and development, and four items were presented for green performance management and appraisal. Moreover, a six-item scale was adapted from a study by Jackson et al. (2011) to measure the green empowerment. Based on a study by Chou (2014), a fiveitem scale was utilized to compute the pro-environmental psychological capital. Besides this, the five-item scale was applied to calculate the psychological green climate, which was settled by Norton et al. (2014). A scale with three items was adapted from a previous study by Frese et al. (1997) to calculate the pro-environmental behavior. Furthermore, this study adapted a seven-item scale to quantify the environmental performance of hotels that was developed by Kim et al. (2019). Content validity was accomplished by sending the measuring instrument to five consultants who were inclusive of two hotel managers from human resource department and three specialized educationists (assistant professors) in hospitality management. According to their suggestions, some minor amendments were made.

Findings
This present-day research work deployed partial least squares-SEM meant for assessing the projected hypothesis by means of Smart PLS 3. For this reason, it is extensively applied and is believed to be the latest calculation practice in all commercial concerns, notably in the hospitality and tourism sectors (Parvez et al., 2022). Here, empirical exploration meant to predict plus to explain the considered latent variables derived from contemporary theory. Partial least squares-SEM has been stroked as an effective technique when the subject matter is to be tempted for the purpose of enforcing the structural modeling in the elucidation and estimation of constructs (Hair et al., 2016). In addition, it is presumed to be a stretchy technique for model valuation (Ringle, Wende and Will, 2005). Ease of work with respect to low sample extent is another source of motivation to use the aforementioned skill in comparison with Amos and data normality (Hair et al., 2016); hence, currently, to resolve the said issues, the previously stated technique is being used. In addition, PLS algorithm and bootstrapping process is being made to catch factor loadings to quantify the construct validity besides internal consistency reliability (Parvez et al., 2022), along with path coefficients, and relevant significant level for hypothesis trial. At the earliest, the measurement model and then estimations were established by way of structural model valuation.

Data Normality
Even though PLS-SEM is a "non-parametric" calculation device and does not compel the normal distribution state of data as identified earlier, the normality distribution need not to be neglected before setting on some inferential statistics (Hair et al., 2007). Accordingly, by following the procedures listed by Munro (2005), this examination measured the data normality via the skewness, besides kurtosis, and histogram plots. Outcomes opened those values of all latent variables that lie in the restricted threshold (so as for skewness and kurtosis, range values have to be between −2 and +2), understanding that the data were normally distributed. Meanwhile, stated findings delineate that there is no dispute of abnormality of data, so analysis can go to the next stage through PLS-SEM.

Common Method Bias
Probably, common method bias (CMB) can go with our data owing to the nature of the research design as single source data assemblage, i.e., simply from hotel managers. Preceding inquiries pronounced that complete "collinearity test" could be organized to catch whether the record was flickered with common method biasness while using structural equation modeling (SEM) into partial least squares (PLS-SEM) procedure Kock (2015). Proclaiming on the aforesaid study by Kock (2015), standing work endeavored to estimate common method bias by observing variance inflation factors (VIFs) observed over a full collinearity examination. The marks of VIF determine whether the cut-off value higher than 3.3 means that the estimated model might go with the question of CMB, and if the values are slightly lower than the said value, 3.3, then the established model could be acknowledged as spare from CMB. Auspiciously, the end result demonstrated that all VIF totals for all studied latent variables lie below the said cut-off value in that way claiming that the data were not contaminated with the error of CMB in existent research. Summing up, the current study did not encounter CMB and can proceed.

Measurement Model Assessment
As mentioned previously, first, the measurement model was tested to estimate the reliability + validity of the data. The internal consistency of the variables was appraised by measures of internal consistency reliability called composite reliability (CR). As can be seen in Table 1 and Figure 2, the CR value of extant data of the study lied from 0.792 to 0.942, which were found to be above the normal threshold value of 0.70 (Hair et al., 2016). In addition, there comes convergent validity done by average variance extracted (AVE) plus discriminant validity through the Fornell-Larcker criterion to assess the construct validity of the used instrument (Ab Hamid et al., 2017). The AVE value ranged from 0.501 to 0.81, which embarked that data had convergent validity as a prescribed criterion (Ab Hamid et al., 2017). The said criterion suggested that convergent validity should be adequate if AVE is greater than 0.5 and computed factor loadings of all items were greater than 0.5.
Furthermore, for testing discriminant validity, the square roots of each construct's AVE were premeditated (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). Results proved that diagonal wise, the square root   Table 2, which demonstrated that all values are not as much as that of the confirmed cut-off value of 0.85 as debated by Fornell and Larcker (1981), and if values are less than 0.85, then the measurement established its discriminant validity. Collectively, both results guaranteed that discriminant validity is not a hazard to the prevailing research.

Structural Model Assessment
Structural modeling was executed for hypotheses assessment in green hotels' perspective once it is confirmed that the model is reliable and valid by means of weighing measurement model. Path coefficients, plus t-values, as well as standard errors are computed to define that model and relationships are significant with collected data. The values of path coefficients revealed whether hypotheses were supported or otherwise. Bootstrapping formula was considered in Smart PLS 3 (Ringle et al., 2005) to guesstimate the main and moderation effects. As shown in Figure 3 and Table 3, green recruitment and selection practices are not associated in a significant manner with proenvironmental psychological capital (β = −0.112, t = 2.17; LL = −0.214, UL = −0.019); in this manner, H1 is denying support. The answers also bear that there was a statistically significant association between green training and development and the pro-environmental psychological capital of green hotels (β = 0.266, t = 4.673; LL = 0.153, UL = 0.372), thus supporting H2.
In addition, it was revealed that green performance management has a significant relationship with pro-environmental psychological capital of green hotels (β = 0.182, t = 3.727; LL = 0.085, UL = 0.269), therefore accepting H3. Next, green empowerment is also positively related to proenvironmental psychological capital (β = 0.398, t = 9.087; LL = 0.309, UL = 0.475) for green hotels; thus, H4 is supported. Pro-environmental psychological capital is significantly related to psychological green climate (β = 0.425, t = 9.346; LL = 0.333, UL = 0.511); thus, H5 is also empirically supported. In addition to this, psychological green climate has a significant relation with pro-environmental behavior in green hotels (β = 0.325, t = 7.24; LL = 0.223, UL = 0.411), claiming support for H6. Pro-environmental behavior has a significant and positive association with environmental performance (β = 0.387, t = 9.198; LL = 0.308, UL = 0.472); thus, H7 is supported for green hotels. Last but not least, environmental consciousness significantly and positively moderates the relation between pro-environmental behavior and environmental performance (β = 0.184, t = 3.657; LL = 0.08, UL = 0.282), thus receiving support for H8 in case of green hotels.

DISCUSSION
The current decade has witnessed growing academic interest to scrutinize the contribution made by green HR practices to environmental performance (Razab et al., 2015;Guerci et al., 2016;Kim et al., 2019;Anwar et al., 2020). The current study is one of the steps further to extend the prior composed work on the relationship between green HRM practices and environmental performance. In this milieu, the current study introduced the four underlying key constructs, pro-environmental psychological  capital, psychological green climate, pro-environmental behaviors, and environmental consciousness, to support the connection between green HR practices and environmental performance in the Pakistani hotel industry. These four constructs have a vital contribution to support the positive contribution of green HR toward environmental performance. Furthermore, the current study considered four key capacities of green HR, namely, 1) green recruitment and selection, 2) green training and development, 3) green performance management and appraisal, and 4) green empowerment. Therefore, to address the objective of this study, eight hypotheses were proposed by using shreds of evidence from previous studies.
The findings indicate that four dimensions of green HR practices have a key contribution to pro-environmental psychological capital. Green recruitment and selection has a significant positive influence on pro-environmental psychological capital, which is consistent with the findings by Saeed et al. (2019). This relationship is ignored by the literature, as merely rare studies examined the role of green HR practices in psychological capital. For instance, Gupta (2013) examined the bond between HR practices and psychological capital; however, pro-environmental psychological capital is not considered. Furthermore, it is found that green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment have a positive influence on pro-environmental psychological capital. The findings of the study are aligned with the previous literature (Daily et al., 2009;Datta, 2015;Muster and Schrader, 2011;Paill´e et al., 2014), which emphasize that green HRM practices support employers to foster a greener perspective and perform favorable actions toward the environment such as saving water and energy, and using recycled items. If those employees are hired who know the environmental image and policies, they will be psychologically and proactively responsible for saving their environment.
Moreover, pro-environmental psychological capital has an optimistic effect on the psychological green climate. The psychological climate is one of the outcomes of employee social interactions whereby workforces determine the different standards of organizational policies, practices, as well as measures that they both meet and detect in the workplace (Kuenzi and Schminke, 2009). The employees interpret the organization's HR practices and policies, and will in turn form their perceptions of the organization and its values (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004;Kaya et al., 2010). These values of organizational policies, as well as practices, are grounded on pro-environmental psychological capital. Determination of organizational values and policy is connected with the pro-environmental psychological capital. Therefore, consistent with the current study, proenvironmental psychological capital has a positive influence on the psychological green climate. During the cognitive process, hotel employees will develop their confidence and motivation, which is pro-environmental psychological capital concerning the psychological green climate. When an organization plans a robust environmental agenda, the pro-environmental psychological capital is most crucial to enhance psychological green climate. Therefore, along with results of the current study, previous studies also show the connection between pro-environmental psychological capital and psychological green climate. The correlation between pro-environmental psychological capital and psychological green climate is unique, which is rarely studied by the previous investigation; particularly, in the hotel industry, this relationship is unique.
Furthermore, this study examined that psychological green climate possessed a positive influence on pro-environmental behaviors. Various previous studies discussed the proenvironmental behaviors and psychological green climate (Dumont et al., 2017;Lacasse, 2016;Unsworth et al., 2013;Whitmarsh and O'Neill, 2010). Consistent with the present-day study, previous studies also provided evidence of the relationship between pro-environmental psychological behavior and psychological green climate, as the psychological climate is a prodigal estimator of human behavior among organizations (Rousseau, 1985). It is also highlighted by Dumont et al. (2017) that psychological green climate has a significant influence on taskrelated environmental behavior in addition to voluntary environmental behavior. Therefore, the psychological green climate has a noteworthy influence on pro-environmental psychological behaviors, which is consistent with the previous studies.
Along with this, the current study expression is that proenvironmental behaviors have a positive influence on environmental performance. Therefore, from the aforementioned discussion, it is evident that four dimensions of green HR practices, green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment, have a positive influence on pro-environmental psychological capital, pro-environmental psychological capital has a positive influence on psychological green climate, the psychological green climate has a positive influence on pro-environmental behaviors, and finally, pro-environmental behaviors have positive influences on environmental performance. Therefore, it is proved that the unique relationship between green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, green empowerment, proenvironmental psychological capital, psychological green climate, and pro-environmental behaviors has a vital role to enhance environmental performance concerning the hotels. In addition to this, another key investigation of this study is the interaction effect of environmental consciousness. The current study proved that, along with the other variables, environmental consciousness is also a key contributor toward environmental performance in hotels. Environmental consciousness influences positively hotel environmental performance by strengthening the positive relationship between pro-environmental behaviors and environmental performance. Hence, in addition to the environmental consciousness, the unique relationship between green HR practices, pro-environmental psychological capital, psychological green climate, pro-environmental behaviors, and environmental consciousness has a major role to promote a hotel's environmental management practices.

Theoretical Contribution
The theoretical implications of the current study are divided into four major sections. First, the current study introduced proenvironmental psychological capital as a unique construct about Frontiers in Environmental Science | www.frontiersin.org March 2022 | Volume 10 | Article 841205 green HR practices and environmental performance. Proenvironmental psychological capital is rarely studied in previous studies to promote environmental performance. Particularly, the consideration of pro-environmental psychological capital in the hotel business of Pakistan is not well proven in the prior work. Second, the psychological green climate is another key construct that has a major role in increasing the environmental performance of hotels. Several previous studies were carried out on proenvironmental psychological capital and psychological green climate; however, the influence of pro-environmental psychological capital on psychological green climate is not considered in the previous studies. Third, the current study is one of the pioneer studies that examined the pro-environmental behaviors in Pakistani hotels. Pro-environmental behavior is one of the newly developed constructs, which is not studied in environmental performance. By presenting the underlying mechanism from green HRM practices toward psychological outcomes (psychological green climate, pro-environmental psychological capital, pro-environment behaviors, and environmental performance), the research intended to extend the routine inquiry. When green attitude employees are given green empowerment, their attitude toward creating a green environment is enhanced that forces them to be aware of their anti-environment actions (creation of pollution). SCT strengthens our model that if employees experience psychological empowerment, they act proactively and feel motivated to conserve water and energy usage. Another theory of RBV supports our research while putting humans at the core focus of inquiry for achieving the objective of environmental performance. If the green HRM practices are deployed, employees will become capital for organization and perform environmentally friendly actions. Fourth, regarding all these variables, the current study also introduced environmental consciousness. The moderating role of environmental consciousness is not considered by the previous studies (Pham et al., 2019). Hence, this study added to the literary knowledge by investigating the moderating role of environmental consciousness in the relation of pro-environmental behaviors and environmental performance. If the individuals are conscious about their behavior and its unfavorable impact on the environment, then they deliberately do positive actions to advance environmental performance. Furthermore, the existing study presents the empirical evidence to social cognitive theory. Our research model affirms the notion as asserted in SCT that when competent green individuals are hired and trained effectively, they become pro-environmental psychological capital and perform pro-environmentally friendly activities, which in turn foster environmental performance. The lens of SCT is extended in the current paper by proclaiming that if environmental measures and protection tasks are promoted through green HRM practices, the reputation and position of the hotel will increase (Bandura, 1999;Sawitri, Hadiyanto and Hadi, 2015;Singh et al., 2020).

Practical Implications
Together with the theoretical contribution, the presented study has a significant contribution to the practice. This study has vital importance for the hotel management to promote environmental performance. Majorly, the current study is important for those hotels that are trying to adopt green HR practices. Pacifically, the current study provided several suggestions to the practitioners while making the strategy to promote environmental performance with the help of green HR practices through various ways. First, this study investigated that green HR practices (green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment) have a positive influence on proenvironmental psychological capital. These findings assist the hotel management to enhance pro-environmental psychological capital by promoting green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment for the promotion of environmental performance. Second, the current study found that proenvironmental psychological capital has a positive effect on the psychological green climate. Therefore, hotel management should enhance pro-environmental psychological capital to enhance psychological green climate, which is helpful to promote the relationship between green HR practices and environmental performance. Third, it is investigated that psychological green climate has a key contribution to promote pro-environmental behaviors, which are vital to transforming the influence of green HR practices toward environmental performance. Thus, with the help of the current study, hotel management should highlight the role of psychological green climate while making the strategies for hotel environmental performance. Fourth, this study also suggested to the hotel management to enhance the proenvironmental behaviors to facilitate environmental performance among hotels. Fifth, finally, the current study provided major practical implications about the environmental consciousness. The environmental consciousness provided major insights for the hotel management to promote the positive role of proenvironmental behaviors on environmental performance. Hence, the relationship between green HR practices, proenvironmental psychological capital, psychological green climate, pro-environmental behaviors, and environmental consciousness provided vital insights for the hotel management and environmental management companies to promote environmental performance.

Limitations
Even though the recent revision has a significant role in the literature and practice, this study also has a few limitations, which possibly will be the future direction. First, the current study considered four green HR practices: green recruitment and selection, green training and development, green performance management and appraisal, and green empowerment. Therefore, the current study is limited to the four green HR practices; thus, future studies should also consider other green HR practices to increase the contribution. Second, the current study is limited to the hotels of Pakistan. The hotel environmental practices have a significant difference from country to country. Therefore, the results of this study may not apply to various developed countries. In this direction, future studies should be carried out to examine these practices in various industrialized countries to compare results with the current study. Third, the sample of this study includes respondents from various hotels and restaurants. The involvement of respondents from various hotels and restaurants may influence the results of this study; therefore, in the future, only one prominent hotel or restaurant should be selected to test the role of green HR practices in environmental performance rather than to select many hotels and restaurants.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The raw data supporting the conclusion of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.