Bridging the Intention–Behavior Gap: Effect of Altruistic Motives on Developers’ Action towards Green Redevelopment of Industrial Brownfields

Green redevelopment (GR) is a promising strategy to deal with industrial brownfields, this sustainable initiation usually fails to be implemented practically in China. Thus, investigating the driving mechanism of developer’s GR behavior, as executors of renovation project, is quite essential. The study introduced formative constructs perceived risk (PR) and perceived cost (PC), integrated them with theory of planned behavior (TPB), and extended them by adding two altruistic motives, awareness of responsibility (AR) and awareness of consequence (AC), as moderation variables to explore the bridging role of altruistic motives in GR’s intention–behavior gap. Based on 156 developers-oriented field surveys, the study conducted data analysis through partial least square structural equation modeling. It interestingly showed that subjective norm could primarily affect developers’ GR behavior, while perceived behavior control is not a significant influencing factor. Meanwhile, adding PR and PC as the additional constructs significantly increased the explanatory power of standard TPB model. Furthermore, the conclusion confirmed altruistic motives AR can distinctly adjust the relationship between GR intention and behavior, whereas AC has no such effect. These findings provide a scientific theoretical basis and a targeted path reference for promoting GR of industrial brownfields.