## 3 Research Hypothesis and Model Construction
### The Introduction of the Attributional Style of Behavior Outcome  
According to psychological attribution theory, attribution refers to the process in which individuals summarize causes in various ways according to their behavior and consequences. According to this theory, behavioral results have a significant impact on repetitive behaviors, and the impact is more obvious when the actual behavioral results are inconsistent with individual expectations [43; 44]. In the process of attribution, individuals will produce different emotions and show different choice preferences. [PERSON] defined individuals' preferences for the interpretation of different types of information as attribution styles and divided them into positive attribution style, intermediate attribution style, and negative attribution style [25]. [PERSON] proved that behavioral attribution styles differ significantly in the depth and pattern of individual information searches [45]. [PERSON] constructed the complete attribution model, which expanded the attribution theory to a wider research field [27]. He unified attribution cognition and attribution outcome and constructed a cognitive model of the attribution process. It consists of four nodes: \"consequence-cause-cognition-behavior\". The basic theories are as follows: the impact of the analysis of behavioral causes on cognition (i.e., attributional results); when cognition is reinforced by attributional consequences, cognition will influence new behaviors.  
Because of the repeatability of individual behavior, the attribution process for individual behavior is a long-term iterative process. Energy-saving behavior is repetitive, and the attribution process for energy-saving behavior is also a long-term iterative process. In this process, individuals with a positive emotional preference have a strong will to perform the behavior, while a negative emotional preference will make the individual lose the will to perform a certain behavior. If policy intervention is carried out at this stage to strengthen the perception of behavioral results and positive emotions, residents can be incentivized to continue to adopt energy-saving behaviors. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the impact of attributional style on residents' energy-saving behaviors in the context of sustainable development. Based on previous studies, this study selects the attributional style of behavior outcome for energy-saving behavior to measure residents' positive, negative, or intermediate emotions when making the attribution. Combined with external policy intervention, this study focused on exploring the different influences of different attribution styles on the responses of residents to energy-saving policies. Further combining with the previous construction of the policy response model, hypothesis H4 is proposed:  
**Hypothesis 4 (H4).**_Residents' degrees of understanding, support, and implementation of energy-saving policies have significant differences in the attributional style of behavior outcome._  
In summary, this study constructed a policy response model of residents' energy-saving behavior, combined with an attribution style. Based on the public's degree of understanding, support, and implementation of the energy-saving policy, this study selected a Price control policy (PCP), Fee Collection Policy (FCP), Economic subsidy policy (ESP), and Campaign publicity policy (CPP) as the external policy interventions, to further explore the differences in response to different energy-saving intervention policies. Additionally, based on the psychological attribution theory, this study focused on the sustainable development process of energy-saving behavior. We also discussed the difference in the response of the attributional style of energy-saving behavior outcomes to the intervention policy in the sustainable development stage of residents' energy-saving behavior. The theoretical research model of this study is shown in Figure 1.