Accepting environmental sustainability costs is a recurring constraint in sustainable consumption and higher education, where students are increasingly exposed to sustainability-related trade-offs and cost-bearing measures. This study aims to examine how green consumption values (GCVs) and consciousness for sustainable consumption (CSC) relate to willingness to accept environmental sustainability costs (WAEs) among Polish Generation Z university students, and whether the GCV-WAE and CSC-WAE associations differ by gender.
The study analyses cross-sectional CAWI survey data from Polish Generation Z higher education students (n = 1,474) using structural equation modelling. CSC is specified as three parallel dimensions: environmental (ENV), social (SOC) and economic (ECON). Gender differences are tested using multi-group comparisons.
GCV is strongly positively associated with WAE (β = 0.888, p < 0.001) and with all three CSC dimensions. When CSC is modelled as three parallel paths, only ENV carries a significant indirect association between GCV and WAE (IE = 0.077, SE = 0.022, z = 3.506, p < 0.001; 95% CI [0.034; 0.120]); the ENV indirect component is small relative to the total GCV-WAE association (VAF = 8.14%), indicating weak partial mediation. Gender differences appear only upstream: the GCV-ENV association is stronger among men (β male = 0.764) than among women (β female = 0.668; Δβ = −0.096, p = 0.001). Paths predicting WAE do not differ by gender, and moderated mediation is not supported. Findings reflect cross-sectional covariation and should not be interpreted causally.
The study offers a bounded refinement of value-based sustainability models by examining cost acceptance as a sustainability trade-off in a higher education student population. The study also tests a multidimensional specification of CSC (ENV/SOC/ECON) as parallel pathways linking values to WAE, alongside gender-based multi-group comparisons, while maintaining an explicitly non-causal interpretation.
