With the rapid development of the economy, the problems of environmental pollution, climate change and resource exhaustion have become increasingly prominent. With the rapid development of the global economy, the problems of environmental pollution, climate change and resource exhaustion have become increasingly prominent. For these environment problems, the international community has put forward the development model of low-carbon economy, required every country to change their production and consumption patterns, reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment in recent years. Faced with the pressure of international community and the requirement of domestic sustainable development, Chinese government has proposed to reform deeply and drive by innovation, foster ecological culture, and adhere to the development of green and low-carbon cycles. The construction of ecological civilization should start from young people, start from the education of family and school, and comprehensively accelerate the transformation of the whole people into a diligent, green and low-carbon way. The number of Chinese college students with a college degree or above is 3,017.54 million in 2018. A large number of college students with high-level scientific and culture are easy to accept new things and more concerned about the fate of human beings. Therefore, researching on the influencing factors and driving mechanism of college students’ green consumption is not only helpful to guide and educate the college students’ green consumption, but also to explore and cultivate the potential main force and future leaders of green consumption. Currently, the research on green consumption focuses on the analysis of consumers’ subjective will variables, while it involves individual objective ability and external situational factors, but mostly ignores the interaction between them and subjective will. Because green consumption is affected by subjective and objective factors, internal and external factors, it is necessary to introduce individual subjective will, individual objective ability and external factors into the green consumption model at the same time. Firstly, through sorting out and comparing the relevant research theories, it found that interpersonal behavior theory, environmental literacy model, responsible environmental behavior theory, planned behavior theory, attitude-behavior-condition theory, and value-belief-norm theory are the six most influential environmental behavior models. This paper proposes an improved responsible environmental behavior model through appropriately adjusting Hines’ responsible environmental behavior model. In combination with the characteristics of Chinese College students, environmental emotion, environmental problem cognition, environmental responsibility, social cognition, vipassana control, utility values, objective ability, subjective will, face culture and policy incentives are selected as the main influencing factors of green consumption, which are divided into three groups: individual subjective will, individual objective ability and external situational factors according to the improved responsible environmental behavior model. Secondly, the sample data of the impact mechanism of green consumption of university students are obtained through the analysis of 812 valid questionnaires issued and retrieved by junior college students, undergraduate students and doctoral students from four university towns.This data was tested for reliability and validity test, correlation analysis, hierarchical regression, multiple regression and adjustment effect analysis by SPSS and Amos. Thirdly, the relevant hypotheses are verified by different types of regression analysis methods. Simple regression analysis method is used to validate the relationship between subjective will and green consumption of assumes H1, the relationship between objective ability and green consumption of assumes H2; Hierarchical regression analysis method is are used to validate the relationship between driving factors, subjective will and green consumption of assumes H3 and H3m; Multiple regression analysis method is used to validate the relationship between ability and green consumption of assumes H4; Hierarchical regression method with a regulatory effect is used to validate the relationship between subjective will, objective ability, situational factors and green consumption of assumes H5. The empirical results indicate that (1) The improved responsible environmental behavior model is effective. The improved model can also be popularized and applied to other subjects’ environmental behavior research, such as residents’ ecological management, enterprises’ circular economy, government’s ecological civilization construction and so on. (2) College students’ environmental emotion, cognition of environmental problems and social norms partially mediate green consumption through their subjective will, while sense of responsibility, vipassana control and utility values completely mediate green consumption through their subjective will. This is consistent with the findings of Hines. Therefore, we can stimulate college students’ green consumption intention to guide their green consumption from 6 aspects: stimulating the emotional resonance of the environment, enhancing responsibility, improving the sense of vipassana control and increasing awareness of environmental issues, influence of social norms, and positive feedback on utility values. (3) The subjective will and objective ability of college students’ green consumption act on green consumption behavior together, and the objective ability plays a greater role in green consumption than the subjective will. Therefore, when college students have the subjective will of green consumption, they need to have the knowledge, skills, corresponding time and economic costs to implement green consumption. (4) Face culture has a negative moderating effect on the transformation path of college students’ subjective will and objective ability to green consumption, while policy reward has a positive moderating effect on the transformation path of College Students’ objective ability to green consumption only.