Background <p>University safety education has long faced the dilemma of an imbalance between investment and effectiveness, rooted in the failure to effectively translate the sense of responsibility cultivated through values education into safe behavioral practices, coupled with inadequate theoretical explanations for this transmission mechanism.</p> Methods <p>To address this challenge, this study constructs an integrated "system-psychology-behavior" model and conducts empirical testing through stratified sampling surveys of students from multiple universities across the country, using structural equation modeling and bootstrap methods.</p> Findings <p>The study finds that sense of responsibility plays a crucial mediating role between safety education and safe behaviors, driving behavioral transformation through both cognitive and motivational pathways; behavioral risk level has a significant moderating effect, with different risk groups exhibiting differentiated transmission patterns.</p> Conclusions <p>This research not only reveals the internal mechanism by which safety education influences behavior but also promotes the transformation of safety education paradigms from knowledge impartation to behavioral transformation, and from emergency management to source governance, providing an empirical foundation for constructing a precise educational intervention system.</p>