Students’ Awareness, Expectations, and Perceptions About Sustainability: A Case Study in an Ordinary University in China

Students’ concern for sustainability is an important force in promoting green university initiatives. Although most of China’s college students attend ordinary universities, the extant literature regarding China’s green universities is limited to top-tier universities. Based on a case study, this research aims to explore the practice of the greening efforts of an ordinary university through surveying the students’ awareness, expectations, and perceptions about sustainability. This research finds that the students are aware of sustainability to a fair extent, but their awareness comes more from non-university factors (e.g., family education) than university factors. Furthermore, while students have high expectations regarding the university’s efforts to promote sustainability, their perceptions indicate that the university’s sustainability-related performance is poor. This research concludes that China’s ordinary universities need to bridge the gap between students’ expectations and perceptions, which they can do by responding to students’ concerns and by supporting bottom-up approaches of policymaking.