One of the main obstacles to green development is the green motivation-behavior gap of individuals. Within the stimulus-organism-response paradigm framework, this paper establishes a research model based on the big five personality model, aiming to better understand the effect of media exposure on residents' green purchasing behavior and the narrowing of the motivation-behavior gap. Structural equation modeling and multiple regression analysis approaches were employed using data from 530 samples. We investigated (1) whether an ecological personality mediated the relationship between media exposure and green purchasing behavior, and (2) whether gender also moderated these relationships. Results indicate that media exposure can effectively shape residents' ecological personality, although not all dimensions of an ecological personality can be effectively transformed into green purchasing behavior. The mediation effects of the five dimensions of ecological personality were significantly different, and there were gender differences in these pathways. Overall, our findings are the first to indicate that media exposure can influence green purchasing behavior by shaping residents' ecological personality traits, particularly those that are stable and durable in theory, although green practitioners should be aware that their green information strategy should be tailored to match their audience's ecological personality and gender.