Students’ Perception of Campus Sustainability …
301
proposed instrument would work as a complementary tool to assess HEIs’ sustainability performance and assist managers in improving their efforts to increase the
students’ commitment to building a sustainable HEI which is able to face and accomplish the new society requirements towards sustainable development. Taking into
account the performance obtained through the collected data, a gap may exist between
the implementation of sustainable practices and their perception by the students. This
gap may be overcome with an effort to improve communication towards sustainability
practices by using the available social media channels to provide information about
achievements pertinent to sustainable development on campus.
The second objective of the study intended to evaluate the adherence of the
proposed tool, Student Perception of HEI’s Sustainability (SPHEIS), in relation to
the dimensions of HEI sustainability designed by Lozano et al. (2015). The proposed
tool was partially adherent to the Lozano et al. (2015) model once the eight components of the SPHEIS were related to five dimensions of the Lozano et al. (2015)
model. In fact, five of the eight components were found adherent to the Campus
operations dimension which are in line with the work of Findler et al. (2018), who
analysed 19 SATs and concluded also that the analysed tools include more items
focused on Campus operations. Table 2 showed that the highest amount of the analysed items, 34.48%, were grouped into this dimension. A justification for the dimensions Outreach and Assessment and reporting not being considered in the proposed
SPHEIS model would be that these two dimensions tend to be less easily perceived by
the students, since usually students are more focused on activities related to campus
operation, education and research.
Considering the results, implications and recommendations could be designed
for university planners and decision-makers to increase sustainability in HEIs and
correlated institutions. As an illustration, a few of them are presented below. (1)
Future studies may expand the sample and include more items, such as those related
to Assessment and reporting as well as Outreach, in order to comply with all dimensions of HEIs’ sustainability and to provide results that are more representative.
(2) Future research may examine the validity of the introduced assessment tool in
another regional context. (3) The assessment tool may be adapted to other correlated
institutions, like hospitals or secondary schools, to measure customer/user perception
of sustainability. (4) Besides, due to time limitations, this study was applied with a
cross-sectional approach, therefore it is suggested for future research to adopt a longitudinal approach as a way to control the sustainability performance and implement
the principles of continuous improvement.
References
Alshuwaikhat HM, Abubakar I (2008) An integrated approach to achieving campus sustainability: assessment of the current campus environmental management practices. J Clean Prod
16(16):1777–1785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2007.12.002
301
proposed instrument would work as a complementary tool to assess HEIs’ sustainability performance and assist managers in improving their efforts to increase the
students’ commitment to building a sustainable HEI which is able to face and accomplish the new society requirements towards sustainable development. Taking into
account the performance obtained through the collected data, a gap may exist between
the implementation of sustainable practices and their perception by the students. This
gap may be overcome with an effort to improve communication towards sustainability
practices by using the available social media channels to provide information about
achievements pertinent to sustainable development on campus.
The second objective of the study intended to evaluate the adherence of the
proposed tool, Student Perception of HEI’s Sustainability (SPHEIS), in relation to
the dimensions of HEI sustainability designed by Lozano et al. (2015). The proposed
tool was partially adherent to the Lozano et al. (2015) model once the eight components of the SPHEIS were related to five dimensions of the Lozano et al. (2015)
model. In fact, five of the eight components were found adherent to the Campus
operations dimension which are in line with the work of Findler et al. (2018), who
analysed 19 SATs and concluded also that the analysed tools include more items
focused on Campus operations. Table 2 showed that the highest amount of the analysed items, 34.48%, were grouped into this dimension. A justification for the dimensions Outreach and Assessment and reporting not being considered in the proposed
SPHEIS model would be that these two dimensions tend to be less easily perceived by
the students, since usually students are more focused on activities related to campus
operation, education and research.
Considering the results, implications and recommendations could be designed
for university planners and decision-makers to increase sustainability in HEIs and
correlated institutions. As an illustration, a few of them are presented below. (1)
Future studies may expand the sample and include more items, such as those related
to Assessment and reporting as well as Outreach, in order to comply with all dimensions of HEIs’ sustainability and to provide results that are more representative.
(2) Future research may examine the validity of the introduced assessment tool in
another regional context. (3) The assessment tool may be adapted to other correlated
institutions, like hospitals or secondary schools, to measure customer/user perception
of sustainability. (4) Besides, due to time limitations, this study was applied with a
cross-sectional approach, therefore it is suggested for future research to adopt a longitudinal approach as a way to control the sustainability performance and implement
the principles of continuous improvement.
References
Alshuwaikhat HM, Abubakar I (2008) An integrated approach to achieving campus sustainability: assessment of the current campus environmental management practices. J Clean Prod
16(16):1777–1785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2007.12.002