Consumers claim environmental concern consistently choose conventional products over green alternatives. This study has discovered a paradox about Malaysian consumers’ green purchasing decisions which are driven more by novelty-seeking psychology than environmental responsibility consciousness. Through multi-methodological validation combining correlation analysis, machine learning algorithms, and structural equation modeling across urban consumers, we found that consumer novelty seeking exhibits stronger associations with green consumption behavior than traditional planned behavior constructs. Machine learning feature importance analysis and causal inference modeling consistently validated this pattern, with the extended theoretical framework substantially outperforming conventional environmental motivation models. These findings challenge established assumptions in environmental management and reveal that green products may be perceived as a means of innovation adoption rather than a demonstration of environmental responsibility behavior. The discovery suggests that marketing strategies emphasizing technological advancement, unique experiences, and product differentiation could prove more effective than traditional environmental appeals in promoting sustainable consumption, offering new pathways for environmental management policies that leverage innovation-driven rather than responsibility-driven consumer psychology.