Pet funeral service intentions in urban China: The roles of emotional attachment and perceived closeness in an extended theory of planned behavior

China's urbanization has made companion-animal loss an increasingly salient source of grief, yet such grief often remains disenfranchised because of limited social recognition and ritual support. This study examines intentions to use formal pet funeral services in Chinese cities and identifies the psychological factors that shape such intentions. To ensure contextual relevance, we first conducted exploratory text mining of Weibo discussions on pet aftercare, grief expression, ritual needs, and service-related concerns. Building on these insights, we developed an extended Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework that incorporates emotional attachment to the deceased pet as a mediating mechanism and perceived closeness in the human-animal relationship as a moderating factor. Using survey data from 504 urban pet owners, we tested the model through regression-based mediation and moderation analyses. The results show that family and friends norms, external control, affective attitude, emotional attachment, and perceived closeness significantly predict behavioral intention, whereas social norms, internal control, and cognitive attitude do not show significant direct effects. Emotional attachment functions as a selective rather than universal mediator, significantly transmitting the effects of internal control, external control, and affective attitude to behavioral intention. Perceived closeness further strengthens the positive relationship between emotional attachment and behavioral intention. Theoretically, the study extends the TPB by clarifying when attachment-related mechanisms become salient in a high-emotion service context, while using bereavement theory as a contextual lens for interpreting pet-loss decision-making. Practically, the findings support more emotionally resonant, trustworthy, and culturally sensitive pet funeral services in contemporary China.