Affective commitment and sustainable procurement in Chinese HEIs: Unravelling the mediated moderation of intention and knowledge

Research on sustainable procurement has gained traction, recognizing it as an organizational transformation integrating sustainability criteria into procurement processes. Existing literature highlights the direct positive impact of affective commitment to change on sustainable procurement behaviour but overlooks the mediating role of behavioural intention and moderating effects of information environments. This study addresses this gap by constructing a mediated moderation model based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour and information asymmetry theory, investigating how affective commitment influences sustainable purchasing behaviour through sustainable purchasing intention, and how knowledge moderates this pathway under information asymmetry. This study adopts the snowball sampling method to collect data from purchasers in procurement centres of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Jiangsu, China, analysed using PLS-SEM. the results showed that sustainable purchasing intention mediates the relationship, with affective commitment exerting both direct (80%) and indirect (20%) effects on behaviour. Knowledge significantly moderates the intention-behaviour link: higher knowledge weakens the positive impact of intention on behaviour. The study enriches theoretical understanding by verifying the mediating role of intention and knowledge’s moderating mechanism, while providing empirical evidence from Chinese HEIs. Practically, it informs policy design for promoting sustainable procurement and highlights the need to balance value identification and decision-making factors in organizational change.