AI Adoption and Engineering Project Designers’ Green Creativity in Construction Industry: A Dual-Path Moderated Mediation Model

Green creativity is critical for achieving green outcomes in engineering project design, where designers must address environmental goals under constraints of cost, functionality, and technical feasibility. Consistent with the increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) in design practices, the psychological impact of AI adoption on designers’ green creativity has been a central issue in green engineering designs. Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study theorizes and tests a dual-path moderated mediation model, with job engagement and psychological detachment as two parallel mediating pathways of resource enhancement and maintenance, respectively, through which AI adoption influences designers’ green creativity under the “immersion–recovery” resource mechanism. Furthermore, inclusive leadership is set as a key boundary condition to moderate the mediating pathways above. A multi-wave online survey of 312 engineering project designers from the Chinese construction industry is employed to examine the hypotheses. These findings not only extend theoretical understanding of the mechanisms underlying AI’s impact in the green engineering domain but also provide new insights for leadership practices in complex engineering design contexts.