Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess how Sustainable food consumption (SFC) can improve the quality of life for consumers and encourage green food production. Sustainable consumption is an important factor in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations. However, achieving SFC requires government policies, consumer environmental values and accessible channels. Design/methodology/approach: This paper investigates how to promote SFC intentions using a sample of 386 students from Chinese universities. By using SPSS Process software, this study developed and tested a theoretical model grounded in the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) framework. Findings: The findings indicate that environmental emotions mediate the relationship between sustainability knowledge and SFC intentions. Contextual factors such as green self-efficacy (GSE) moderate both the direct relationship between environmental emotions and SFC intentions and the indirect relationship between sustainability knowledge and SFC intentions via environmental emotions. The paper continues with a discussion of the findings and their practical implications. Originality/value: This paper applied the SOR model to the context of students' sustainability knowledge and SFC intentions. This also presents environmental emotions as a mediation variable, and green self-efficacy as a moderating factor, and constructs the moderated mediation model. This is one of the novel contributions to the literature on SFC intentions and sustainability knowledge.