Journal of Cleaner Production 48 (2013) 101e107

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Assessment of sustainable university factors from the perspective of

university students
Mostafa Nejati*, Mehran Nejati
School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Minden, 11800 Penang, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Given the growing global interest on the universitys role towards promoting sustainability, an increasing
Received 9 August 2011 number of universities are committing themselves to sustainability. Nonetheless, many of university
Received in revised form stakeholders and academicians are unaware of sustainability principles. In the lack of sufcient studies to
4 September 2012
investigate the perceptions of major stakeholders within the university-setting on the role of the
Accepted 5 September 2012
university in contributing to sustainability, the current study aims to investigate the perceptions of
Available online 23 September 2012
university students towards factors of a sustainable university by developing a reliable scale to assess
sustainability practices of universities. Through examining the perception of 379 university students,
Keywords:
Universities
a standard scale design process was applied. Upon validation of the proposed scale, a four-dimensional
Sustainability structure for the key factors of a sustainable university from the perspective of students was identied,
Sustainable university including 1) community outreach, 2) sustainability commitment and monitoring, 3) waste and energy,
Higher education and 4) land use and planning. Finally, implications were discussed.
Sustainable development 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Scale development

1. Introduction
As we start the second decade of the 21st century, a growing
number of universities and higher education institutes are
embarking upon adopting more responsible behavior towards
society and various stakeholders, and are increasingly pursuing
sustainable development agenda (Waas et al., 2010). Many insti-
tutions have committed themselves to sustainable development by
signing international charters/declarations (Lozano et al., 2013;
Waas et al., 2010; Wright, 2004). The commitment of universities to
sustainable development was further enhanced by the drafting of
the Talloires Declaration in 1990 which was one of the rst major
stimuli to get the commitment of universities to sustainability.
There is a need for universities to re-think their raison detre and
re-consider the purpose behind their existence. Universities are no
more assessed solely based on their potential to provide quality
education; rather other factors and criteria including their
commitment to the progress of society play a role in reecting the
true image of a university. Universities, like any other organization,
should have a holistic view of the roles and responsibilities and
consider the long-term impacts of their decisions which are beyond
the present time (Lozano, 2008b). Universities are now expected to
engage with communities and benet the society at large (Lukman
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 60 174034094; fax: 60 46577448.
E-mail addresses: mostafa.nejati@gmail.com (M. Nejati), mehran.nejati@
gmail.com (M. Nejati).
and Glavic, 2007), as they have the potential to be leaders in all
elds of research, teaching and learning, sustainability and
community engagement (Moore, 2005; Stephens and Graham,
2010). In that view, it is the responsibility of universities to
convey both moral values and professional skills to the students to
facilitate the creation of a better future for all (Wright, 2006).
Nowadays, universities worldwide are changing their mission,
vision, and educational practices in order to better cope with
growing concerns about social and environmental issues and to
respond to the proliferating public demand for a sustainable society
(Md Shahbudin et al., 2011). This is in line with the growing global
consensus on the universitys role towards promoting sustain-
ability (Wright, 2004).
Universities are now increasingly institutionalizing sustain-
ability practices within their curricula, research, operations,
outreach, assessment and reporting (Lidgren et al., 2006; Lozano,
2010). Similarly, Velazquez et al. (2006) conceptualize the scope
of a sustainable university within the areas of teaching, research,
outreach and partnership, and in-campus sustainably practices.
Besides, Evangelinos et al. (2009) argue that the promotion of
sustainability in the context of higher education institutions can be
achieved through teaching and research by the diffusion of
knowledge on the meaning and importance of sustainability
(Delakowitz and Hoffmann, 2000), improvement of environmental
management (Bonnet et al., 2002), and transmitting knowledge to
society (Owens and Halfacre-Hitchcock, 2006).

0959-6526/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.09.006
102 M. Nejati, M. Nejati / Journal of Cleaner Production 48 (2013) 101e107

While the need for sustainable development as a vital compo- differences in college students perceptions of, and commitment to,
nent for a brighter future has received ample attention, the study of campus sustainability of the two different US states of Alabama and
sustainability in the context of higher education remains as an Hawaii. The results demonstrated that respondents from both
emerging area of research of utmost importance. Still many of states were similar in their self-assessed knowledge about
university leaders and academicians are unaware or ignorant of sustainability, and in their views about the responsible entity for
sustainability principles in the university setting (Lozano, 2006) sustainability. However, a statistically signicant difference was
and many of the activities in the university has remained unsus- observed in the willingness to participate in sustainable practices
tainable. Besides, the transition to a sustainable university and the between the two states. In another study by Earl et al. (2003) the
sustainability reporting within academic setting are still at their students perceptions of sustainability were assessed in the College
infancy stage (Lozano, 2011; Velazquez et al., 2005) and sustain- of Charleston Campus, US. Their research ndings showed that
ability concept still continues to be misunderstood by people and many of the surveyed students were uninformed about the concept
organizations (Waas et al., 2011). As stated by Waas et al. (2010), of sustainability. Unlike that, another study by Barth and Timm
much remains to be done for sustainable development to become (2011) examined the perceptions of undergraduate students
genuinely and fully implemented at universities and for universi- towards a Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD)
ties to become true sustainable development leaders. Therefore, approach and found out that the students showed a sophisticated
what is really crucial is that the existing attitude of universities and understanding of the sustainability concept and agreed with its
their attention to sustainability principles should be reinforced associated values.
with support from all the organizational members. In other words, Similarly, a study by Kagawa (2007) was carried out at Univer-
the sustainability practices within the academic setting need to be sity of Plymouth to explore students perceptions of sustainable
understood and practiced by all members of the organization at development, where results showed that students related
various levels. Only then can a collective force for achieving the sustainability more with environmental aspects, rather than
sustainability mission be mobilized successfully. Similarly, the economic or social.
organizations collaboration with its different stakeholders can Tuncer (2008) carried out a case study in one of the technical
undergird its sustainability transformation (Lozano, 2008a). universities of Turkey, surveying 823 students to explore their
Sustainability in higher education is an emerging eld and there perception on sustainable development. Results revealed a signi-
is still a dearth of previous studies to investigate the perceptions of cant difference between male and female students with respect to
major stakeholders within the university-setting on the role of the their perception on sustainability. However, no signicant differ-
university in contributing to sustainability (Wright, 2010) and the ence was found between students who enrolled in an
attempt to evaluate sustainability across campuses has attested to environment-related course and those who did not.
be complicated (Shriberg, 2004). There are limited studies inves-
tigating what organizational members in the university perceive
3. Research methodology
about a sustainable university (Wright, 2010); and to be more exact,
there are even far less previous studies that have addressed the
3.1. Scale design
issue of sustainability from the perspective of students, as one of
the most important stakeholders of universities.
The standard scale design process (Bagozzi et al., 1991), which
has recently been used by Turker (2009) to design a new scale for
2. Students perception of a sustainable university
corporate social responsibility, was applied in this research. As
shown in Fig. 1, the rst step involved extensive literature review,
Despite the importance for the university to enhance students
conceptualization of the framework and item generation.
capabilities and get them involved as active agents of change for
One of the key elements in this research is sustainable devel-
sustainability (Pittman, 2004), there is limited study exploring
opment which is dened as development that meets the needs of
students perceptions of campus sustainability (Eagan and Orr,
the present without compromising the ability of future generations
1992; Earl et al., 2003; Emanuel and Adams, 2011; Kagawa, 2007).
to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987). In an attempt to generate
Yet, understanding the students evaluation of sustainability
an initial pool of items, statements relevant to a sustainable
practices of the university is especially important as it can give the
decision makers a good picture of the universitys performance in the
view of one of their major groups of stakeholders. Besides, it would
provide better insights as to how the students assess their institute in
terms of a sustainable university and allow more involvement of the
students with in-campus sustainability initiatives. As a matter of fact,
the investigation of students attitudes and beliefs is regarded critical
as the promotion of sustainability may be facilitated when students
are proactive (Newport et al., 2003; Nicolaides, 2006).
While the importance of embedding sustainability aspects
within the existing curriculum of universities has been well
understood by the universities (Thomas and Nicita, 2002), it is
imperative that all university members should change their atti-
tudes and practice sustainability-related activities as part of their
culture and system (Lozano, 2006). Nonetheless, the study of
students perceptions towards sustainability remains under-
researched and needs to be further explored. Therefore, the
current study endeavors to contribute to the literature by designing
a valid and reliable measurement scale from the perspective of
students to evaluate sustainability practices of universities and
higher education institutes. Emanuel and Adams (2011) studied the Fig. 1. Scale development process.
 M. Nejati, M. Nejati / Journal of Cleaner Production 48 (2013) 101e107 103

university were adapted from the checklist on sustainable univer- Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy (Kaiser,
sity which was prepared and extracted from the literature after 1970, 1974) were applied. The Bartletts test of sphericity should be
a thorough review by Wright (2010). Overall, 28 relevant items signicant (p < 0.05) for the factor analysis to be considered appro-
were identied, modied and applied in the exploratory survey priate. Furthermore, the minimum suggested KMO index (which
(Table 1). ranges from 0 to 1) for a good factor analysis is 0.6 (Tabachnick and
Fidell, 2001). In this study, Bartletts test of sphericity was signi-
3.2. Exploratory survey cant (p 0.000) and initial KMO index was measured to be 0.806
which indicates a good data highly suitable for EFA.
To reduce the number of items and form smaller number of A principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation
coherent subscales, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was con- was initially conducted to examine the validity of the study
ducted using SPSS. A total of 125 samples were collected for this constructs. Based on the studys sample, a factor loading of 0.60 or
stage. Participants in this stage of research included students of greater on one factor was considered signicant following the
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which is a large public research- criteria set by Chin et al. (1997). As for tackling the issue of high-
intensive university in Malaysia. Table 2 summarizes the demo- cross loadings, we applied the criteria set by Snell and Dean
graphic prole of participants in exploratory survey. (1992) whereby we deleted items when the differences between
In order to assess the factorability of the data and ensure adequacy the loadings across factors were less than 0.10. Following our
of sampling, Bartletts test of sphericity (Bartlett, 1954) and the exploratory factor analyses, 12 out of the initial 28 items were
retained forming four distinct factors with eigenvalues greater than
Table 1
Initial items of sustainable university scale.
1.0, explaining 67.583% of the variance. Table 3 shows the factorial
structure of the scale obtained.
No. Items
After considering the items included in each factor and the
1 Campus transportation should be a top priority in university related literature, they can be labeled as community outreach (3
sustainability issues
items), sustainability commitment and monitoring (4 items), waste
2 Campus land-use should be a top priority in university sustainability issues
3 Campus building planning should be a top priority in university and energy (3 items), and land use and planning (2 items),
sustainability issues respectively. In order to ensure internal consistency of the identi-
4 University should install solar panels on campus buildings ed constructs, reliability analysis was conducted resulting in
5 Sustainable university should incorporate environmental
Cronbachs alpha of 0.816, 0.727, 0.713, and 0.627 respectively. The
knowledge into all relevant disciplines at all levels of study
6 Research done on campus must include a summary of potential
high Cronbachs alpha conrms reliability of the constructs.
environmental issues that may be faced during practical implementation
7 Sustainable university should arrange opportunities for students to 3.3. Conrmatory survey
study campus and local sustainability issues
8 Sustainable university should consult students on their opinions of
sustainability To conrm the developed scale and validate its factorial struc-
9 Sustainable university should provide incentives for students to ture, the nalized items in the previous stage were administered to
participate in environmentally friendly activities a new sample. The new sample included international students
10 Sustainable university should perform regular sustainability audits from countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
on campus
11 Sustainable university should perform sustainability audits on the
surrounding community Table 2
12 Sustainable university should establish environmentally and Demographic prole of participants in rst stage (Exploratory Survey).
socially responsible purchasing practices
13 Sustainable university should provide support for individuals who seek Demographics Frequency Percentage (%)
environmentally and socially responsible careers Gender (N 125)
14 Sustainable university should encourage students to participate in Male 48 38.4
various volunteer activities around the community Female 77 61.6
15 Sustainable university should create a written statement of their
commitment to sustainability Age
16 Each department within the sustainable university must create Below 24 years old 48 38.4
their own written statement of their commitment to sustainability 24e26 15 12.0
17 Sustainable university should encourage critical thinking about 27e29 years old 7 5.6
sustainability issues Over 29 55 44.0
18 Sustainable university should provide monetary reimbursement
for individuals taking environmental courses
Nationality
19 Sustainable university should establish policies that allow for the
Malaysian 83 66.4
hiring, promoting, and granting tenure to faculty based on their
Non-Malaysian 42 33.6
knowledge of and work in sustainability
20 Sustainable university should establish policies allowing for the
termination of faculty if they fail to incorporate environmental Period of study in the current university
strategies into their course material and research Less than 1 year 28 22.4
21 Sustainable university should reduce the ecological footprint of More than 1 year e less than 2 years 47 37.6
the university More than 2 year e less than 3 years 30 24.0
22 Sustainable university should reuse campus waste More than 3 years 19 15.2
23 Sustainable university should use renewable and safe energy sources Missing 1 0.8
24 Sustainable university should emphasize sustainability through
support services Current level of study
25 Sustainable university should engage in community outreach Bachelors 48 38.4
programs that benet the local environment Masters 15 12.0
26 Sustainable university should create green community centers to PhD 62 49.6
benet the local environment
27 Sustainable university should create partnerships with government, non- Courses on environment/social responsibility
governmental organizations, and industry working toward sustainability Yes 36 28.8
28 There should be greater self reliance within the sustainable university No 89 71.2
104 M. Nejati, M. Nejati / Journal of Cleaner Production 48 (2013) 101e107

Table 3
Rotated factor loading matrix (VARIMAX). The bold gures show the loading on the principal factor. A factor loading of 0.60 or greater on one factor was considered signicant
following the criteria set by Chin et al. (1997).

Items Factor Commonalities

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4

25) Sustainable university should engage in community 0.845 0.190 0.210 0.091 0.802
outreach programs that benet the local environment
26) Sustainable university should create green community 0.786 0.257 0.058 0.151 0.710
centers to benet the local environment
27) Sustainable university should create partnerships with 0.718 0.193 0.211 0.231 0.651
government, non-governmental organizations, and
industry working toward sustainability
15) Sustainable university should create a written statement 0.241 0.792 0.126 0.026 0.702
of their commitment to sustainability
16) Each department within the sustainable university must 0.150 0.777 0.095 0.008 0.635
create their own written statement of their commitment
to sustainability
11) Sustainable university should perform sustainability audits 0.065 0.595 0.374 0.447 0.698
on the surrounding community
10) Sustainable university should perform regular sustainability 0.247 0.504 0.327 0.320 0.525
audits on campus
22) Sustainable university should reuse campus waste 0.006 0.075 0.818 0.145 0.696
23) Sustainable university should use renewable and 0.276 0.144 0.755 0.039 0.668
safe energy sources
24) Sustainable university should emphasize sustainability 0.493 0.040 0.634 0.065 0.651
through support services (e.g. Recycling bins across
campus, efcient public transport throughout university, etc.)
3) Campus building planning should be a top priority 0.303 0.007 0.018 0.804 0.739
in university sustainability issues
2) Campus land-use should be a top priority in 0.032 0.142 0.072 0.779 0.633
university sustainability issues

Total
Sum of squares (eigenvalues) 2.405 2.027 2.011 1.668 8.111
Percentage of trace 20.038 16.888 16.760 13.897 67.583

Note: Items have been sorted by loadings on each factor.

(ASEAN) attending an international conference on sustainability

held in March 2011. The relevance of the conference theme to the
nature of this research made it an appropriate outlet to administer Table 4
Demographic prole of respondents in second stage (Conrmatory Survey).
the study survey. Out of 254 distributed questionnaires in this stage
of research, 192 completed questionnaires were received. However, Demographics Frequency Percentage (%)
after discarding incomplete questionnaires, a total of 185 ques- Gender (N 185)
tionnaires were deemed usable yielding a response rate of 72.8%. Male 70 37.8
Table 4 summarizes the demographic prole of respondents in the Female 115 62.2

second stage of the research.

Age
Conrmatory factor analysis was conducted using AMOS to Below 24 years old 177 95.7
conrm the factorial structure of the developed scale. To ensure 24e26 7 3.8
having a good model t, the Chi-square normalized by degrees of Missing 1 0.5
freedom (c2/df) should not exceed 3, goodness of t index (GFI)
should exceed 0.9, adjusted goodness of t index (AGFI) should Nationality
Malaysian 79 42.7
exceed 0.8, non-normed t index (NNFI) should exceed 0.9,
Non-Malaysian 106 57.3
comparative t index (CFI) should exceed 0.9 and root mean
squared error (RMSEA) should not exceed 0.08. Although in the CFA Period of study in the current university
analysis the p-value was signicant, assessment of t indices sug- Less than 1 year 24 13.0
gested adequate model t (c2/df 1.449 with c2 69.572 and More than 1 year e less than 2 years 67 36.2
More than 2 year e less than 3 years 52 28.1
df 48, GFI 0.943, AGFI 0.908, CFI 0.979, NNFI 0.971 and
More than 3 years 36 19.5
RMSEA 0.049). Missing 6 3.2
In line with the suggestion of Chiu and Wang (2008), for
examining the quality of measurement, authors tested the Current level of study
construct reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Bachelors 177 95.8
Masters 1 0.5
Reliability of construct was evaluated using the composite reli-
PhD 3 1.6
ability values. As shown in Table 5, the factor loading for all items Others 3 1.6
exceeds the recommended level of 0.6 (Chin et al., 1997), and the Missing 1 0.5
average variance extracted (AVE) for each construct exceeds the
recommended level of 0.5 (Hair et al., 1998). Thus, we can conclude Courses on environment/social responsibility
that convergent validity is established in this study. Yes 113 61.1
No 70 37.8
Finally, to examine discriminant validity, diagonal elements in Missing 2 1.1
the calculated table should be larger than off-diagonal elements
 M. Nejati, M. Nejati / Journal of Cleaner Production 48 (2013) 101e107 105

Table 5
Reliability tests of constructs.

Construct Items Mean (SDa) Cronbachs Convergent validity

alpha
Loadings Composite AVE
reliability
Community outreach CO1 3.72 (0.81) 0.770 0.69 0.77 0.53
CO2 3.59 (0.89) 0.81
CO3 3.67 (0.93) 0.67
Sustainability SCMon1 3.43 (0.82) 0.866 0.68 0.87 0.62
commitment SCMon2 3.34 (0.87) 0.80
& monitoring SCMon3 3.38 (0.80) 0.82
SCMon4 3.38 (0.88) 0.84
Waste and energy WE1 3.17 (0.87) 0.770 0.69 0.76 0.52
WE2 3.30 (1.02) 0.76
WE3 3.51 (0.93) 0.71
Land use and planning LUP1 3.51 (0.90) 0.844 0.75 0.86 0.75
LUP2 3.41 (0.91) 0.97
a
Standard Deviation.

(Chiu and Wang, 2008). Table 6 summarizes the measured coef-
cients for discriminant validity.
Overall, the developed scale meets all the requirements for
reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity and
satises the requirements for measurement quality as suggested by
Chiu and Wang (2008). Besides, the factorial structure of the
developed scale is conrmed. Therefore, based on the results of this
study the proposed scale for measuring sustainability practices of
universities from perception of students is validated. Therefore, it
has been developed and re-formatted to be suitable for measuring
the sustainability practices of a university (see Appendix A). This
scale can be used by the university decision makers to assess the
sustainability practices of the university. While the demographic
prole of participants supports the generalizability of the scale in
other contexts, there is a need for future studies to conrm the
current structure of the scale in culturally different contexts.
4. Discussion
The ndings of the current study revealed that four constructs
can be considered to assess the sustainability practices of the
university from students perception. These constructs include 1)
community outreach, 2) sustainability commitment & monitoring,
3) waste & energy, and 4) land use and planning.
The university should address sustainability holistically both
on-campus and off-campus. In fact, signing international sustain-
ability declarations, committing to international policies, and
running community engagement projects would not be compre-
hensive enough, if the universities ignore basic sustainability
principles in their operations and other on-campus efforts, such as
waste management and efcient use of energy, as well as optimized
and sustainable use of land resources.
Development of such a sustainable university and delivery of
education for sustainable development could result in the learners
adoption of sustainability values, attitudes and behaviors (Buissink-
Smith et al., 2011) and facilitate achieving a sustainable tomorrow.

Despite the growing interest of scholars and the extensive impetus
of universities to embed sustainability values in higher education,
much is yet to be done to ensure that our universities are moving on
the right track to become sustainable and comply with sustain-
ability agenda. This article has been an attempt to narrow this gap. In
particular, the article has explored the perceptions of students, as one
of the key stakeholders of the university, to develop a scale for
assessing sustainability practices within the university setting.
This research not only advances the understanding about
perceptions of university students on sustainable development, but
it also matter a great deal for institutional administrators and policy
makers, as they can use the scale proposed in this research, which
has been developed based on students perceptions, for measuring
their institutions sustainability performance. By developing a new
valid and reliable scale to measure the sustainability practices of
universities from the students perspectives, this study provides
a platform for future studies to apply the proposed scale to measure
sustainability performance of the universities.
Table 6
Discriminant validity coefcients.
1 2 3 4
1) Community outreach 0.728
2) Sustainability 0.476 0.787
commitment & monitoring
3) Waste and energy 0.462 0.518 0.721
4) Land use and planning 0.270 0.336 0.292 0.866
Note: Diagonal elements (in bold) are the square root of the average variance
extracted (AVE). Off-diagonal elements are the correlations among the constructs.
5. Conclusions
The research ndings have considerable implications for
university planners and decision makers in the higher education.
The proposed scale would help to assess the universitys perfor-
mance in making the transition to the notion of sustainable
university from the students perspectives; a university which has
minimal environmental impacts, high level of social responsibility,
and considerable contribution to the economical and environ-
mental development. Hence, a sustainable university can be
dened as a university that apart from seeking academic excel-
lence, tries to embed human values into the fabric of peoples lives;
a university that promote and implement sustainability practices in
teaching, research, community outreach, waste & energy manage-
ment, and land use and planning through a continuous sustain-
ability commitment & monitoring. Such an approach would
catalyze the infusion of accountability attitude and expansion of
sustainability practices within the society, and would contribute to
the creation of a just society in the new millennium.
Although the scale in this research has been developed and vali-
dated in one part of the world, given the fact that in the scale design
process both local and international students were involved
(including a considerable involvement of 33.6% of international
students), it could provide a broader perspectives of students towards
the concept of sustainable university as the ndings do not merely
reect local students perceptions. Future studies may examine the
validity of the introduced construct in other contexts (e.g. different
countries). Future research may also investigate the impact of
perceived sustainability of universities on university image.
106 M. Nejati, M. Nejati / Journal of Cleaner Production 48 (2013) 101e107
Appendix A
Measuring universities sustainability practices.
Item
Community outreach
The university engages in community outreach programs
that benet the local environment.
The university has created green community centers to benet
the local environment.
The university has created partnerships with government,
non-governmental organizations, and industry working
toward sustainability.
Sustainability commitment & monitoring
The university has created a written statement of their commitment
to sustainability.
Each department within the sustainable university has created
its own written statement of their commitment to sustainability.
Sustainability audits are performed on the surrounding community.
Regular sustainability audits are performed on campus.
Waste and energy
The university reuses campus waste.
The university uses renewable and safe energy sources.
The university emphasizes sustainability through support services
(e.g. Recycling bins across campus, efcient public transport
throughout university, etc.)
Land use and planning
Campus building planning is a top priority in university sustainability issues.
Campus land-use is a top priority in university sustainability issues.
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