Empowerment, not replacement: How AI trust fosters green creativity among tourism hotel managers through green self-efficacy and green job crafting

The prevailing narrative of AI as a threat to human replacement fosters anxiety and undermines sustainability goals in the hotel industry. In contrast, the current research reimagines AI as an enabling force. Based on social cognitive theory, a two-path model is constructed to investigate how AI trust empowers hotel managers to achieve green creativity and generate novel and useful environmental protection ideas. Through a cross-sectional survey of 253 hotel managers in Hainan, China, this study found that AI trust not only directly promotes green creativity, but more importantly, it operates through two unique enabling mechanisms. First, it achieves cognitive empowerment by enhancing managers’ green self-efficacy. Second, it achieves behavioral empowerment by incentivizing green job crafting. The results confirm that green self-efficacy and green job crafting are significant and parallel mediating variables. This research shifts the discourse from substitution to empowerment, providing a novel perspective on AI as a partner in the tourism industry. It demonstrates that cultivating AI trust can unleash the agency of managers, transforming them into proactive contributors to a sustainable and innovative future for the industry. These insights are crucial for tourism stakeholders seeking to leverage human and technological assets for a competitive advantage.