Weber State University
EN-6: Assessing Sustainability Culture

The WSU Sustainability Survey was first used in AY 2019-2020 (January 2020) and was recently administered again in February-March 2024. 

The first version of the WSU Sustainability Survey (January 2020)  was developed under the lead of the director of the Sustainability Practices and Research Center, predominantly during 2019, through a process of reviewing other institution's surveys, literature on assessing sustainability literacy and culture, and discussion/review with the WSU sustainability team (staff) and members of the faculty Environmental Initiatives Committee.

The survey has been developed with the intent of its being a longitudinal survey given to a representative sample of students, faculty and staff every 3-4 years. It is designed to assess sustainability literacy and culture through questions on sustainability knowledge, attitudes, behavior, as well as awareness of and engagement with campus sustainability initiatives, programs, events and courses. Thus, this same survey is also the source of data for AC 6 (Sustainability Literacy Assessment). The survey received approval by the Institutional Review Board prior to being used.

The 2024  survey has a total of 36 questions (3 are multi-sectioned), 19 of these are related to sustainability literacy as described in AC-6. Parts 2-4 are oriented to sustainability culture (attitudes, behaviors, and awareness of and engagement with sustainability at the institution), with Part 5 on demographics. Sustainability attitudes are assessed using the Sustainability Attitudes Scale (SAS) developed by Zwickle and Jones, (2018), which queries 11 areas in one matrix-formatted question.  Attitude questions related to climate change are also included and come from the Six-Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY) on global warming/climate change attitudes (4 questions) (Chryst, et al., 2018). The questions on behavior (11 areas), as well as awareness and level of engagement with campus sustainability areas/initiatives/opportunities (10 items) were developed for this survey.

Note on the attached WSU Sustainability Survey 2024:

Blocks 2-4 get at sustainability culture: Block 2 is focused on sustainability attitudes, Block 3 on sustainability-oriented behaviors, Block 4 on Awareness of and engagement with sustainability at Weber State University. The final block collects demographic data.

A representative sample of students, faculty and staff was requested from and provided by the Director of Academic Analytics in the Office of Institutional Effectiveness. A total of 2499 emails were provided, which included 1499 students and 1000 faculty and staff. 

The survey was administered via Qualtrics during February and March 2024 with recruitment of participants  via a personalized email invitation to those pulled as the representative sample, followed by three reminders to non-respondents. The response rate was 28% with 658 complete surveys (some questions have more responses), 271 students, 179 faculty, and 249 staff. All colleges and divisions of campus were represented in the survey, with somewhat more responses coming from the College of Health Professions.  

The 2024 survey revealed the same pattern as the 2020 survey in that the percentages regarding attitudes in agreement with sustainability-oriented statements are higher than those related to sustainability-oriented behaviors. The gap between attitude and behavior is well known.

Attitudes - Aggregate results of the SAS questions, which include 11 statements and a five point scale for responses from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" showed the following percentage of respondents in each group agree or strongly agree with the list of the statements (e.g., "Clean air is part of a good life") - students 81.3% (n=157), faculty 91% (n=120), staff 87.9% (n=217). These percentages are nearly the same as those from the 2020 survey.

Behaviors - The aggregate responses in 2024 regarding sustainability-oriented behaviors (11 were asked about - e.g., bring a reusable bag when shopping, repair/reuse/repurpose items, take civic/political action) were that 44.8% of 157 students (compared to 44% in 2020), 54.1% of 120 faculty (compared to 54.6% in 2020) and 50.8% of 217 staff (compared to 48.6% in 2020) indicated that they usually or always engage in these behaviors. For students, turning off lights/electronics, conserving water and recycling were the most identified behaviors in both 2024 and 2020, while engaging in civic/political action remained the lowest (19.4%).  For both faculty and staff recycling, turning off lights/electronics and water conservation were most practiced, while engaging in civic/political action and carpooling or using public/alternative transit remained the least common (~20%).

Awareness & Engagement - While detailed analysis is yet to be completed, preliminary results suggest that staff and faculty are generally much more aware than students of the university's sustainability units, initiatives, and opportunities.  The Green Department Program (for staff and faculty) is likely helping among these groups.  It seems clear that there is a need to improve fostering student awareness of WSU sustainability opportunities, and so too engagement with them. 

Engagement - In aggregate across the possible areas of engagement with campus sustainability initiatives (events, programs, etc.) 32% of both faculty (n=95) and staff (n= 175) indicated they had participated 1-2 times or more within the past year.  For students that number is significantly lower at 10%.  The areas with the most engagement as reported by students (n=123) are with SUS attributed classes (15%), the WSU Sustainabiltiy website (15%) and the Sustainability Clubs (12%).  The greatest engagement by both staff and faculty, 40% or more, is with the Green Department Program, sustainability website, newsletter and, sustainability-related community programs.  The percentage of faculty and staff reporting engagement with community programs was about 10% higher than what was reported in the 2020 survey.  Attendance/engagement with sustainabiltiy events was about 7-10% lower for all groups than what the 2020 data indicated (post-pandemic times may have been an influence).

Sustainability attitudes are assessed using the Sustainability Attitudes Scale (SAS) developed by Zwickle and Jones, (2018). Attitude questions related to climate change are also included and come from the Six-Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY) on global warming/climate change attitudes (4 questions) (Chryst, et al., 2018). Questions on behavior, awareness and engagement were developed for this survey.  The awareness and engagement section was reworked somewhat for this second use of the survey to reduce the number of questions and, ideally, better guage awareness and level of engagement with sustainability programs/initiatives going forward.

References: 

• Chryst, Breanne, Jennifer Marlon, Sander van der Linden, Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach & Connie Roser-Renouf, 2018. Global Warming’s “Six Americas Short Survey”: Audience Segmentation of Climate Change Views Using a Four Question Instrument, Environmental Communication, Vol.12, No. 8, 1109-1122.


• Zwickle A., Jones K., 2018. Sustainability Knowledge and Attitudes—Assessing Latent Constructs. In: Leal Filho W., Marans R., Callewaert J. (eds) Handbook of Sustainability and Social Science Research. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham.