How Are Students’ Pro-environmental Behaviors Formed? A Qualitative Content Analysis

Universities play an undeniable role in directing and explaining behavior patterns. This raises expectations from universities to institutionalize pro-environmental behaviors in their structure. It is so of crucial importance to identify factors affecting students’ pro-environmental behaviors as the most important human resources at universities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting students’ pro-environmental behaviors. The statistical population of this qualitative study was composed of agricultural students at Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran. According to the the research aim, the PRISMA flow-chart were used to refine and select the appropriate data. Data were analyzed by using NVivo10 software. Results show that students’ pro-environmental behavior is affected by 10 factors, the most important ones being values and norms, experiences, social capital, knowledge and awareness, university infrastructure, organizational culture, curriculum contents, self-efficacy, and concerns over environmental degradation. Cluster analysis shows that organizational culture and individual values influence all other factors that underpin students’ pro-environmental behaviors

Factors Affecting Students’ Value Co-creation to Institutionalize Sustainability in Academic Structure: The Case of Iranian Agricultural and Natural Resources’ Universities

Value co-creation process as a mutual interaction between individuals is a key issue across the management network. Recently, studies have placed a special emphasis on people’s interaction in ord e r to ac co mplish val ue cocreation. Given that the process of experience exchange enables us to identify our resources in transactional processes and make collaboration to achieve common values, the purpose of this study was to identify factors affecting student value co-creation to institutionalize sustainability in agricultural and natural recourses universities. Statistical population of the research consisted of 2248 students of which 204 students were selected using stratified random sampling. The main research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire whose face and content validity was confirmed by a panel of experts and whose construct validity was confirmed by using explanatory factor analysis (KMO=0.752; P<0.01). The reliability was checked by calculating ordinal theta (θ≥ 0.89). Data was analyzed by SPSS20. Descriptive findings showed that student value co-creation level was moderate (43.060 %). The findings of exploratory factor analysis revealed that seven factors including teaching quality, support from top management, students’ social capital, confidence to faculty member, self-efficacy, proenvironmental values, and infrastructures of information and co mmunicatio n tec h n ol ogy (ICT) captured 77.74 percent of student value co-creation variance

Explaining the Sustainability of Universities through the Contribution of Students’ Pro-Environmental Behavior and the Management System

As the sustainable university makes sustainability a central priority in its teaching and research, it is important to understand how universities are transitioning towards sustainability. Their pioneering of new practices, and their education of future generations, are giving sustainable universities a special ability to create and influence change. However, the effective implementation of sustainability policies in universities is highly dependent on the willingness and commitment of the management and students to engage in sustainable activities, and there is a lack of systematic effort in how best to map this interaction. To address this gap, this study mainly aimed to explain the sustainability process of universities by emphasizing the roles of students and the management system. A mixed method approach was used to achieve the goal. First, a qualitative content analysis of related research papers was performed through the PRISMA method to figure out the most important factors affecting the integration of sustainability into the university structure. The results of this section showed that six factors contribute to the effective implementation of sustainability in universities, which are: university culture, university leadership, sustainability education, sustainability knowledge, attitudes towards sustainability and commitment to sustainability. Then, structural equation modeling was used to ensure the validity of the model obtained from the qualitative section. The results indicated that both university leadership and culture positively influence the implementation of sustainability education in universities, which in turn has a positive effect on students’ knowledge and attitudes towards sustainability. The students’ sustainability knowledge and attitudes along with university leadership and culture showed a positive effect on their commitment to sustainability. Also, the students’ commitment to sustainability issues had the most direct effect on their participation in sustainability-oriented activities, and then their sustainability attitude and knowledge, respectively. Finally, sustainability knowledge, attitude and participation in sustainability-oriented activities were significantly related to the integration of sustainability into the university structure. Transitioning to sustainable universities will make society greener and healthier, setting an example for other organizations and the results of this study will help policy makers, managers and students to understand how to contribute to this transition