A general reaction model for styrene hydrogenation in the CTAB/l-hexanol(l-pentanol or l-butanol)/water reversed micellar solutions was proposed to interpret the catalytic behavior of monodisperse nickel boride particles prepared in situ. Based on this model, the effect of reversed micellar components on hydrogenation activity of the catalyst has been discussed in detail. It is worth noticing that, in the three reversed micellar systems, adding ethanol into the reversed micellar solutions will result in the change of catalyst's activity in the different ways, i.e. decrease for the reversed micellar solution with the low CTAB concentration (6 wt%) and increase for those with the high CTAB content (23 wt % or 38 wt%). The result is attributed to the combined