Investigating personal carbon emissions of employees of higher education institutions: Insights from Mauritius

Abstract

Whilst higher education institutions are often being referred as sustainability change agents, employees of such organizations have an essential role towards promoting low-carbon practices amongst students, who are also influenced by the attitudes and behaviours of teachers. For this, employees of higher education institutions need to properly understand their personal carbon emissions along with reduction mechanisms, in order to instil such knowledge and skills to students. However, previous studies focused principally on estimating carbon emissions of higher education institutions to set reduction targets, rather than emphasizing on the human factor related to reduction of greenhouse gases. Furthermore, limited studies have been undertaken to estimate the carbon footprint of employees of higher education institutions. Taking cognizance of these gaps, this paper investigates the perceptions and behaviour pertaining to personal carbon emissions of employees of higher education institutions through answering different research questions, in order to conceptualize a carbon management framework. To achieve this purpose, a survey was conducted in different higher education institutions in Mauritius and involved 440 employees. Results revealed that carbon emissions of this target group are influenced by demographic factors and nature of activities. In addition, the average carbon footprint of participating employees was found to be approximately two times higher than the per-capita carbon footprint of the inhabitants of the island. These findings also mean that more efforts are needed at different levels in order to better engage employees of higher education institutions to reduce their personal carbon footprints. For this, a carbon management framework has been proposed in this study.