Urban residents’ intention to purchase green buildings in China’s emerging first-tier cities: a multigroup analysis

To address the rising energy consumption in China’s building sector, the government has promoted green buildings as a sustainable solution. Although interest in green buildings is increasing, existing research rarely investigates the psychological determinants of consumers’ intention to pay in China’s New Tier 1 (NT1) cities, nor does it compare these determinants across different cities. This study fills this gap by applying an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) model to three representative NT1 cities in China: Chengdu, Wuhan, and Xi’an. Study applied Partial Least Squares—Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and Multi-Group Analysis (MGA) for model testing. After conducting pairwise comparisons among the three cities, the following conclusions were drawn: In Wuhan, consumer attitude showed the strongest influence on intention to purchase (β = 0.269, p < 0.001), while environmental concern (EC) had the weakest impact (β = -0.04, p = 0.424). In Chengdu, subjective norm (SN) exerted the greatest effect on personal norm (PN) (β = 0.599, p < 0.001), whereas moral norm (MN) had the least influence on attitude (ATT) (β = 0.074, p = 0.162). In Xi’an, environmental concern (EC) also showed the weakest effect on attitude (ATT) (β = -0.02, p = 0.714). The findings highlight substantial behavioral heterogeneity across cities, offering novel insights into how local cultural and psychological factors shape green housing decisions. This study contributes both theoretically and practically by identifying city-specific intervention points to enhance intention to purchase green buildings, thereby supporting more targeted and effective sustainability strategies.