Green innovation in hospitality industry: role of environmental strategies and top management support

. Sustainability concerns are becoming pressing in the hospitality sector, which requires incorporating the green innovation approach to yield excellent business performance and preserve the environment. However, the drivers that underpin green innovation have yet to be comprehensively established. This study aims to examine the drivers of green innovation and investigate top management support as a moderator. Data were sourced from 121 eco-friendly hotels, which comprised 276 respondents analyzed with SEM-PLS. The results demonstrated that embedding environmental strategies significantly affected top management support and green innovation. In addition, the results notably denoted that top management support mediated and moderated the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation. This paper also discusses the theoretical and managerial implications in further detail.


Introduction
In the intensifying competitions, it is desirable for organizations to innovate sustainably [1-3] to elevate performance, resilience, and competitiveness [4,5].Regarding the sustainability aspect, innovation plays a substantial role.The literature has pointed out that organizations are encouraged to actively engage in green-oriented programs [6].With the requirement to enforce environmental preservation programs, green innovation is perceived as an alternate solution to sustainable development goals [7][8][9].The implementation of green innovation has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners to facilitate environmental preservation [2,10].However, the literature that defines the triggers for green innovation is relatively unexplored, leading to diverging views and approaches.Moreover, research subjects are also diverse.
The scholars [11][12][13] state the significance of green innovation in SMEs; meanwhile [14,15] denote the relevance in the manufacturing sector.Nevertheless, related studies in the hospitality sector, at present, remain seldom.This study will bridge the subsequent research gaps.First, existing literature that accounts for green innovation drivers is lacking [11], although it is crucial to determine why organizations perform green innovation by setting up rules or mechanisms that promote pro-environmental behaviour [16].It has prompted organizations to establish a standard operating procedure that encourages the development of eco-friendly characteristics [17].Second, the relationship between top management support and green innovation has not yet been fully explored in the available literature despite successful green innovation is primarily determined by the preparedness and experience of managers in contributing to the environment [18,19].The critical role of top management support is to provide regulations and preparedness to establish an eco-friendly organizational culture [16,20].Third, the mechanism of strengthening green innovation through mediation or moderation is notable for two reasons.First, the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation is subject to the full support of top management [19].Amplifying the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation through top management support will facilitate organizations to set up regulations, funding, and procedures that support saving the environment [21].
Subsequently, to bridge the research gaps, this study is implemented on the hospitality sector in Indonesia under three primary considerations.First, with the shifting of priority programs aside from the oil and gas sector, tourism is propelled as an essential aspect of national development with the prospect of becoming an alternate source of foreign exchange and stimulating the absorption of potential employment [22].Accordingly, tourism infrastructure development, especially hospitality, is obligated to preserve environmental resilience.Second, Indonesia has continuously endeavoured to design sustainable development strategies, promote pro-environmental activities, and reinforce industry participation in environmental preservation [18].Third, Indonesia ranks 116 out of 180 countries, meaning the environmental performance index requires further enhancement [23].Consequently, investigating green innovation in the hospitality industry is justifiable.

Green innovation in the hospitality industry
The hospitality sector holds an indispensable role in preserving the environment.It consumes resources, including water, land, agricultural, and coastal areas, that have led to the impoverishment of natural resources [24][25][26].Therefore, it is crucial to enact regulations that oblige hotels to proactively participate in preserving the environment [16].Literature indicates that the hospitality sector has made considerable efforts to implement various pro-environmental measures.It includes the recruitment process and adopting green human resource management through green recruitment, green training, and green performance [27].Furthermore, it is followed by developing a pro-environmental organizational culture [28,29].Moreover, the hospitality sector has attempted to address pro-environmental challenges by gradually incorporating green innovation [30,31].First, preparing environment-oriented personnel through GHRM [32] to ensure that employees possess pro-environmental behaviour, green lifestyle [27], and passion for preserving the environment [33].Second, develop pro-environmental behaviour policies through green strategies [7,34].Third, create leadership regulations that favour green innovation [18,19].Thus, green innovation is the outmost significant aspect of enhancing environmental performance.

Environmental strategies and top management support
Literature on environmental strategies has captivated scholars' attention.It verifies the heightened concern for preserving the environment [35].However, the interlinkages between environmental strategies and top management support remain understudied.The vision and mission of the organization in participating in environmental preservation have stimulated the development of environmentally oriented strategies [36].This orientation generates various pro-environmental policies that trigger top management commitment to establish relevant policies [37].Therefore, top leadership support is achieved when the hotel has a strategic policy that favours environmental sustainability.Consequently, this is the formulated hypothesis.H1.Environmental strategies significantly affects top management support.

Top management support and green innovation
The emerging role of top leaders in encouraging environmental preservation has been scrutinized by scholars [18,19,38].The findings reveal that the role of top leaders is to generate concrete recommendations related to efforts to preserve the environment.Furthermore, environmental regulations formulated by leaders are expected to promote the adoption of green innovation to attain sustainable organizational capabilities [12,39].The support from the leaders can include policy formulation, the upgrading of green intellectual capital, or circular economy practices [19,21,40].Subsequently, this is the formulated hypothesis.

Environmental strategies and green innovation
Green innovation is a critical construct in environmental performance [29,41,42].Scholars have identified that this construct is crucial in building organizational competitiveness [29,43,44].Nevertheless, research linking environmental strategy as a determinant of green innovation has hardly been examined in the literature [42].A set of regulations and strategies fosters the realization of green innovation.A decently designed environmental strategy allows organizations to embed various environmental issues into operational activities [41] and helps promote the sustainable development of green products [44][45][46], green processes [7], and green management [19,43,47].Accordingly, this is the formulated hypothesis.H3.Environmental strategies significantly affect green innovation.

Mediating role of top management support
We recommend that the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation is partial, considering that top management support is a mediator between environmental strategies and green innovation.Hence, environmental strategies are fundamental to achieving top management involvement [18] and building proenvironmental regulations [19] that are aligned with the organization's vision and mission of preserving the environment [24,48].Moreover, environmental strategies are the cornerstone of stimulating top leadership commitment, ultimately responsible for implementing green innovation [34,49].Therefore, this is the formulated hypothesis.H4.Top management support partially mediates the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation.

Measurements
The constructs in this study were derived from the previous studies.First, the environmental strategies were measured by 4 indicators adapted from [18,42].Second, top management support was measured by 9 indicators adapted from [18,19].Third, green innovation was measured by 8 indicators adapted from [15,42].Subsequently, we employed the SEM-PLS with several notable considerations in this study [53].First, PLS was a rapidly developing software that tests and predicts theories.Second, PLS was convenient for testing mediation and moderation variables with various optional features.Third, PLS enabled researchers to perform simultaneous variable testing.

Result and discussion
In order to achieve the study's objectives, the survey involved 276 respondents from four departments that implemented green innovation in their regularly scheduled activities.
Table 2 presents the demographic information of the respondents.

Outer model measurements
Table 3 demonstrates that the loading factors met the requirement of >0.6.Furthermore, the CR value was >0.7, while the AVE value exceeded the recommended 0.5.Hence, the criteria of validity and reliability were fulfilled [54].

Inner model measurements
To examine the significance of indicators and path coefficients, we applied the 5000sample bootstrap method as prescribed by experts [55].The findings confirmed that the goodness-of-fit (GoF) of the model reached 0.675, which signified the significance of the model's fitness.Consequently, these results implied that the proposed green innovation model applicable to the hospitality sector.Moreover, examination of the standardized residual root mean square (SRMR) and normed fit index (NFI) indicated that the SRMR value reached 0.063, while the NFI reached 0.065, confirming that the model was fit [56].Subsequently, the R 2 examination showed that environmental strategy and top management support accounted for 0.144 (14.4%) of the variance in green innovation.Meanwhile, the R2 value for top management support reached 0.024 (2.4%), which was affected by the environmental strategies variable.Eventually, all Q 2 values were positive, suggesting that all the variables have good predictive relevance.

Hypotheses testing
Table 4 demonstrates that the relationship between environmental strategies and top management support was significant (β=0.153,t-value=2.268),suggesting that H1 was accepted.
This result confirmed previous findings that organizations were increasingly attentive to preserving the environment [35].The hospitality industry contributed to environmental preservation by establishing a designated vision and mission [36], leading to proenvironmental policies that stimulated leadership commitment to developing relevant policies [37].Therefore, top management support was achieved when the hotel adopted a strategic policy that favored environmental preservation [18].Furthermore, the relationship between top management support and green innovation was significant (β=0.283,t-value=5.025),and thus H2 was accepted.This study provided evidence to support previous studies concerning the emerging role of top management in supporting environmental sustainability [18,19,38].In addition, the resulting regulation promoted the adoption of green innovation to attain sustainable organizational capabilities [12].Support from leaders entailed policies, upgrading green intellectual capital, or implementing circular economy practices [19,21,40].
The relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation was significant (β=0.153,t-value=2.268);therefore, H3 was supported.This study became one of the first to explore the relationship between the two constructs.A reasonable explanation was a set of regulations and strategies to promote green innovation.Further, a well-designed environmental strategy in organizations was facilitated to incorporate a broad range of ecological issues into operational activities [41] and fosters the sustainable development of green products [44,46], green processes [7], and green management [19,43,47].Subsequently, Table 5 provides information on the moderating mediation mechanism in this study.First, we examined the role of top management support as mediating the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation (β=0.044,t-value=2.386)was significant; thus, H4 was accepted.The findings highlighted that environmental strategies served as the underpinning to generate top management participation [18] in establishing pro-environmental regulations [19] in aligning with the organization's vision and mission of preserving the environment [24,48].Accordingly, environmental strategies became the cornerstone to trigger top management commitment, leading to responsible for green innovation implementation [34,49].
In the moderation mechanism, top management support amplified the relationship between environmental strategies and green innovation (β=0.216,t-value=2.300);hence, H5 was supported.Top management support's critical role was strategically reinforcing green innovation [18].