Higher education for sustainability: can education affect moral perceptions?

Abstract

A considerable literature looks at universities’ approaches to integrating sustainable development into teaching and learning, but less is known about how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) affects student attitudes, values and norms. To our knowledge, only a few studies have quantified such effects of changes in curricula. This study contributes to this literature by quantifying and measuring the effect of a compulsory sustainability activity on students’ ethical and moral perceptions. Our results show that ESD can indeed affect moral perceptions of what constitutes socially appropriate behaviour, but not in a homogenous way. Instead, the effect varies with background characteristics of the students.

Keywords:

• Higher education
• Education for Sustainable Development
• field experiment
• social norms

Acknowledgements

Research assistance by Sara Klinga is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. Both laboratory and natural field experiments are a common empirical approach used in economics research. See for example Harrison and List (2004) and List, Sadoff, and Wagner (2011), also for an overview of strengths and weaknesses of this empirical method.

2. But note that the control group in this study did in fact attend a sustainability day, but the day had a more conventional content than the treatment group.

3. A total of 20 vouchers were given out, each worth SEK 200 (around USD 28). Winners were randomly drawn from the students who answered in accordance with the mode of a sample of students at the University of Gothenburg. The study on a sample of students at the University of Gothenburg was conducted in December 2014.

4. Sixteen students were dropped because they did not state their gender, and 32 because they did not attend either one of the sustainability days.

5. However, since there are fewer students in total (all programmes) who attend the second year sustainability day, i.e. the Responsibility Day, law students will still make up a larger share of all students on the second day than on the first.