This study aims to explore how green governance in higher education institutions influences students’ environmental behaviors, with a particular focus on bridging the “intention–behavior gap.” It investigates the direct effect of green governance and the mediating roles of responsibility and group norms.
A questionnaire survey was conducted among 1,010 university students. Structural equation modeling, Bootstrap mediation tests and Welch ANOVA with Games–Howell post hoc comparisons were used to test the proposed model and group differences.
Green governance in higher education institutions significantly promotes students’ environmental behaviors. Responsibility and group norms serve as partial mediators, with the two mediators exhibiting comparable effect sizes. Significant differences in green governance perception, group norms and responsibility are found across four intention-behavior groups.
This study integrates responsibility and group norms into a unified framework, and identifies a four-category typology of the intention–behavior gap (high-high, high-low, low-high and low-low) among university students. By revealing the differentiated mechanisms across these four subgroups, it provides empirical evidence for targeted interventions, especially for the high-intention low-behavior group.
