Abstract
BACKGROUND: The healthcare industry is facing trends toward digital transformation and sustainable development. Green creativity, defined as nurses' ability to propose innovative environmental solutions in clinical practice, has become an important driving force for the transformation toward green healthcare. Digital leadership, a leadership approach that utilizes digital technology and information tools to achieve sustainable development, is becoming an important driving force for promoting nurses' green creativity. Exploring the interaction mechanism between the two is crucial for cultivating nurses' green creativity. METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 500 clinical nurses from 24 provinces and 4 municipalities in China using convenience sampling. The Digital Leadership Scale, Innovation Self-Efficacy Scale, Nurse Organizational Innovation Climate Scale, and Green Creativity Scale were used to measure clinical nurses' digital leadership, innovation self-efficacy, nurse organizational innovation atmosphere, and green creativity, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to analyze the relationships among digital leadership, innovation self-efficacy, organizational innovation atmosphere, and green creativity. RESULT: Digital leadership was found to be a positive predictor of both nurses' innovation self-efficacy and organizational innovation atmosphere, with the latter two being significant positive predictors of nurses' green creativity. Innovative self-efficacy and organizational innovation atmosphere played a significant mediating role in the relationship between digital leadership and green creativity. CONCLUSION: Based on the complex adaptive system, this study reveals that digital leadership significantly promotes nurses' green creativity through the chain-mediated pathway of innovative self-efficacy and organizational innovation atmosphere, which provides a theoretical basis and management strategy for subsequent interventions for nurses' green creativity by nursing managers in order to synergistically improve the quality of nursing care and sustainable development.