The Influence Of Leadership Acquisition Methods On Leaders’ Decision-making Preferences In Environmental Dilemmas

Weakening the greenhouse effect requires leaders to consider both economic development and energy efficiency,and the preferences of leaders are crucial to environmental protection.Random selection of leaders(versus decision for themselves)was popularly used in previous research on leaders’ decision-making preferences.However,the method of leadership acquisition may be an important factor influences leaders’ decision-making preferences.Therefore,the aim of current research was to examine the influence of leadership acquisition style(randomly selected versus competitively acquired)on their decision preferences.A digital memory task was used in current research to induce participants’ feelings of their leadership acquisition style which decided their roles in subsequent environmental dilemma task.There were four teams participate together in the environmental dilemma task and the leaders of each team could use their team’s money to invest in clean energy.Only if the total amount of money invested by the four leaders in the mission exceeds a certain threshold can a disaster be averted and the remaining money taken away,otherwise a disaster will occur and everyone will lose all their money.We expect this environmental dilemma task to be effective in testing the effect of different leadership acquisition methods(random vs.competitive)on leaders’ decision-making preferences.The results of the research showed that leaders who’s leadership were competitively acquired(compared to those whose leadership were randomly acquired)were willing to spend more money on developing new energy sources to solve environmental problems(Studies 1,2,and 3),and that the sense of responsibility and moral traits of the leader and the leader’s sense of power did not significantly influence the leader’s decision-making behavior(Studies 1 and 2).Leaders who’s leadership were competitively acquired(compared to those whose leadership were randomly acquired)were more likely to want to avoid disasters and more likely to want to spend more money on clean energy development(Study 2).And they were more likely to engage in environmentally protective behaviors which mediated the relation between leadership acquisition style and leaders’ decision-making preferences(Study 3).The results of current research suggest that competition,as opposed to random selection,motivates leaders to engage in more environmentally protective behaviors and spend more money on clean energy development in environmental dilemma tasks.Current research enriched the research in the area of leadership access influencing leaders’ decision-making preferences by exploring the psychological mechanisms that influence leaders’ decision-making preferences.The findings provided a reference for solving environmental dilemma problems in real life,and which has practical significance and value.