PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISMS BY WHICH ECOLOGICAL ANXIETY INFLUENCES COLLEGE STUDENTS' BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION BEHAVIOR

To explore the mechanism by which ecological anxiety influences college students' biodiversity conservation behavior, a convenience sampling method was used to select 482 college students from 12 regular colleges and universities in a given province as the research subjects. The Ecological Anxiety Scale, Biodiversity Conservation Behavior Scale, Environmental Responsibility Scale, and Environmental Knowledge Questionnaire were used to conduct the survey. A moderated mediation model was constructed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that: (1) ecological anxiety had no significant direct effect on college students' biodiversity conservation behavior; (2) environmental responsibility played a complete mediating role between ecological anxiety and biodiversity conservation behavior, with ecological anxiety positively predicting environmental responsibility and thus promoting conservation behavior; (3) environmental knowledge significantly moderated the above indirect pathways (grouped by a score ≥8 as high environmental knowledge and