A Critical and Empirical Analysis of the Relation between Awareness, Commitment, and Pro-Sustainability Practices amongst Higher Education Institutions

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are crucial for fostering societal progress, offering unique and innovative solutions to pressing environmental problems and influencing students' attitudes. HEIs sensitize their students towards the environment and sustainability. This pivotal role of HEIs in creating awareness and sustainable practices has always been at centre stage for researchers, practitioners and policymakers. However, the studies related to HEIs efforts, awareness, commitment towards sustainability and their practices are mostly done on a set of HEIs in one region or a specific segment of learners.(/p)(/p)A reality check based on an empirical approach to a comprehensive set of HEIs to test how their efforts, awareness and commitment translate into pro-sustainability practices is much required by practitioners, academicians and researchers. The present paper does that reality check through empirical analysis of carbon emission due to websites. Carbon emission of web portals is studied for a comprehensive sample size of (n= 222 HEIs). The selection of HEI is a function of (20 geographical Regions, 3 Types, and 8 faculties such as Management, Law, Healthcare and STEM). (/p)(/p)The careful analysis in the present paper shows that HEIs are highly committed to environmental and social issues, spreading awareness in the student community through their syllabus and other initiatives or finding solutions by encouraging innovation or reward programs. However, this empirical study shows a clear gap between awareness, commitment and implementation of pro-sustainability practices. Based on its findings, we also propose definite and constructive recommendations such as cloud migration and its accelerated adoption, hosting the websites on green IT and code optimization of website so HEIs can reduce the gap between awareness efforts, commitment and pro-sustainability practices. This empirical study will help policymakers, practitioners, and researchers draw future direction for an effective implementation of pro-sustainable practice.