Abstract
This study evaluates campus sustainability initiatives in Japanese higher education institutions over the 10-year period since a related important political declaration was made. Our findings show that implementation of sustainability actions was still largely lacking. This is one of the first extensive empirical studies on Japanese higher education institutions to examine data related to institutions that conform with the Assessment System for Sustainable Campus (ASSC). Our study aimed to identify key factors that promote robust campus sustainability among Japanese institutions. Our research question was “What are the strategic options of institutions that conform with ASSC?” We aimed to determine which fields best prompt Japanese higher education institutions to initiate campus sustainability initiatives. We applied cluster analysis to 42 cases collected by ASSC toward identifying groups of institutions with different strategic options. The analysis identified four groups: “lagging-behind”, “asset-driven”, “top-of-the-class”, and “networkers” clusters. An important finding of this study was that the asset-driven and networkers clusters showed significant positive scores with respect to asset management and networking. Our survey about institution size revealed two major findings: (1) despite the general dependency of campus sustainability on resources, both large and small institutions were capable of attaining the top-of-the-class cluster by adopting a holistic strategy; (2) small institutions are able to implement campus sustainability initiatives by focusing on asset management or networking.
Highlights
Our research question in this paper can be summarized as follows: What are the strategic options of institutions that conform with Assessment System for Sustainable Campus (ASSC)? The answers to that question should indicate the fields that Japanese higher education institutions should focus on to establish sustainable campus actions
Hokkaido University and CAS-Net JAPAN have collaborated in implementing ASSC: an online system was developed by Hokkaido University; CAS-Net JAPAN invited higher education institutions to respond to ASSC
To determine which areas are appropriate for Japanese institutions for embarking on sustainable campus actions at an inaugural stage, we analyzed the strategic options of institutions that responded to ASSC
Summary
The social responsibility of higher education institutions in contributing to a sustainable society is commonly recognized. Since the 1970s, political actions have been implemented to integrate environmental education into the curriculum of higher education institutions [1,2] In addition to such political initiatives, actions to promote environmental efficiency in campus operations became evident in the 1990s—mainly in North American universities and subsequently in European ones. Those actions were influenced by policy actions or declarations undertaken by international meetings on the environment [3,4]. Brinkhurst et al [5] identified the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 [1] and Talloires Declaration of 1990 [6] as important events in this regard
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