The Road to Eco-Excellence: How Does Eco-Friendly Deliberate Practice Foster Eco-Innovation Performance through Creative Self-Efficacy and Perceived Eco-Innovation Importance

In pursuing innovation, eco-friendly deliberate practice will inevitably elevate eco-innovation performance without creative self-efficacy and perceived eco-innovation importance to organizations. This eco-friendly deliberate practice–eco-innovation link is essential because it extends current thinking, treating creative self-efficacy as a causal mechanism and perceived eco-innovation importance as the magnifier of eco-innovation performance. Anchored in social cognitive theory, this study aims to investigate the role of eco-friendly deliberate practice in fueling eco-innovation performance through the mediating role of creative self-efficacy and the moderating role of perceived eco-innovation importance. This study collected 367 responses from the service employees in tourism firms in Pakistan using a time-lagged, i.e., three-wave, research design. The authors analyzed data using a variance-based structural equation model processed in SmartPLS (v 4.0). The findings support the hypothesized relationships, for example, that eco-friendly deliberate practice has a significant positive relationship with eco-innovation performance. In addition, creative self-efficacy significantly mediates the association between eco-friendly deliberate practice and eco-innovation performance. Besides, employees’ perceived eco-innovation importance moderates the eco-friendly deliberate practice–eco-innovation link, such that at high(low) levels of perceived eco-innovation importance, the relationship between eco-friendly deliberate practice and eco-innovation performance is more(less) pronounced. The study examines a hitherto unexplored moderated mediation model to explain under which conditions eco-friendly deliberate practice promotes eco-innovation performance through creative self-efficacy and perceived eco-innovation importance