ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ SUSTAINABILITY AWARENESS ON ENERGY MANAGEMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

Increasing human activities in energy use have an impact on climate change on earth. Realizing the urgency of this problem, comprehensive and integrated efforts are needed with several parties, one of which is higher education. Higher education as an educational institution has a role to increase the understanding and awareness of the younger generation regarding energy management and climate change mitigation. The objectives of this study include analyzing student sustainability awareness of students in initiatives to realize a sustainable higher education environment and analyzing student sustainability awareness based on student demographic backgrounds regarding energy management issues and climate change mitigation in higher education. This survey study involved 426 respondents from 4 universities in East Java, Indonesia. The data collection technique used an online questionnaire that measured several indicators of student sustainability awareness, including environmental knowledge, pro-environmental behavior, environmental attitudes, and environmental behavior intentions. The data analysis technique used descriptive statistics assisted by SPSS version 22 to analyze the relationship between variables. The results showed that the level of student sustainability awareness in 4 universities was classified as very good with a percentage of 55.35%. Based on the demographics of respondents, male students have higher scores (80.38) than female students (80.2). UNAIR students have higher scores (81.21) compared to 3 other universities UB (80.49), UM (79.73), and ITS (79.49). This study is expected to provide references to higher education institutions in improving student understanding and involvement in energy management and climate change mitigation.