Moral and rational pathways to pro-environmental behavior among high school students: An integrated TPB-NAM model

Adolescence is an important period for the development of pro-environmental behavior (PEB), but it remains unclear how subjective norm, personal norm, and perceived behavioral control relate to pro-environmental behavioral intention and self-reported PEB in structured school contexts. This study tested a context-sensitive framework integrating the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Norm Activation Model (TPB-NAM) to explain high school students' PEB. Survey data from 415 high school students in Lanzhou, China, were analyzed using structural equation modeling and mediation analysis. The integrated model showed better overall fit than single-path alternatives and explained substantial variance in intention and self-reported PEB (47.2% and 72.8%, respectively). In the moral pathway, awareness of consequences predicted ascription of responsibility, which predicted personal norm; personal norm then predicted intention. Ascription of responsibility fully mediated the association between awareness of consequences and personal norm. In the rational pathway, attitude and subjective norm predicted intention, whereas perceived behavioral control did not. Subjective norm also had an indirect effect on intention through personal norm, a pattern consistent with, but not a direct test of, norm internalization. At the behavioral stage, intention and perceived behavioral control directly predicted self-reported PEB, whereas the indirect effect of perceived behavioral control through intention was not significant. Findings suggest that personal norm is closely related to intention formation, while perceived behavioral control is more closely related to self-reported behavior under school-based conditions. These findings should be interpreted in light of the cross-sectional self-report design.