The impact of hotel employees’ perceived ESG management activities on organizational citizenship behavior: the mediating role of organizational trust and the moderating role of ESG authenticity

This study examines how hotel employees’ perceptions of ESG management activities influence their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Besides, it examines the mediating role of organizational trust and loyalty and moderating role of ESG authenticity among the ESG management-OCB nexus. Using survey data from 317 employees in business hotels across mainland China and structural equation modeling, the results show that perceived ESG practices significantly enhance organizational trust. Trust, in turn, promotes OCB both directly and indirectly through organizational loyalty, confirming a sequential psychological mechanism. Furthermore, ESG authenticity strengthens the positive effects of trust on both loyalty and OCB, indicating that employees respond more favorably when ESG initiatives are viewed as genuine rather than symbolic. The findings highlight the importance of credible ESG implementation and internal communication in fostering trust, loyalty, and voluntary prosocial behavior among hotel employees, offering new micro-level insights into how ESG practices translate into positive organizational outcomes. This study advances ESG research by establishing an integrated sequential mediation model through trust and loyalty while identifying authenticity as a critical boundary condition, reconciling fragmented understanding of psychological mechanisms in prior literature.