Students’ perception of campus sustainability in a Brazilian university

Abstract

Over recent decades, higher education institutions (HEIs) have been recognised as ideal leaders in supporting the transition to sustainable societies. Leading by example, they have been embarking upon committing themselves to sustainability by incorporating sustainable development practices (SDP) into their integrated management system. As a major stakeholders group, students play a significant role in moving this agenda forward. This study aims to develop an assessment framework to evaluate the students’ perception of campus sustainability, based on a Brazilian HEI case study. A survey was assembled using five demographic questions, three dichotomous questions, and 43 items resorting to a 1–5 Likert scale and administered to a sample of 207 undergraduate technology students. Through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, a reliable scale emerges with 31 items grouped into eight dimensions: Waste; Emissions/Procurement; Energy; Quality of Life in the Workplace (QLW); Fauna and Flora; Institutional Framework; Education/Research; and, Water. The dimensions explain 68.50% of the total model variance. The lowest-evaluated dimension was Emissions/Procurement, with a 2.26 average value, followed by water (2.27) and Energy (2.28); all three of these were below the scale’s midpoint. The best-evaluated dimension was Education/Research, with an average of 3.30. This research provides an insight into HEI students’ sustainability perception and into how the university decision-makers could improve the sustainable practices to increase the students’ engagement.