Objective: Architecture, engineering, and construction industry plays an essential role in maintaining the sustainable development of the industry and the national economy. In recent years, companies have been forced to deal with challenges in performance and talent management due to the global recession. Although scholars have highlighted the potential role of empathy in management for its positive effect on healing people and enhancing organizational performance and sustainability, limited studies have been conducted in a leadership context in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Based on social information processing theory, we conduct a study in China to examine the mediating role of altruistic attitude and the moderating role of a caring ethical climate in the relationship between empathetic leadership and organizational citizenship behavior. Methods: Authors collect survey data from 296 employees in a Chinese real estate company to examine the moderated mediation model with regression analyses, supplemented by fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. Findings: The results revealed that empathetic leadership was positively related to organizational citizenship behavior through altruism. Caring climate served as a significant moderator. Furthermore, the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis reveals six configurational paths leading to high-level organizational citizenship behaviors and four configurational paths leading to low-level organizational citizenship behaviors. Conclusion: Based on survey data, this study can contribute to the understanding of empathetic leadership in architecture, engineering, and construction industry by verifying and extending the emotion-cognition process in the Chinese context. They showed that altruism facilitated the effectiveness of empathetic leadership and that caring climate could amplify the effect on employees’ organizational citizenship behavior. The results also contribute to organizational citizenship behavior literature by revealing the configurational effects of interactions among empathetic leader, team environment and individuals.