Developing a sustainable campus through community engagement: An empirical study

Sustainability is increasingly a basic tenet within the organisational philosophy of many universities. While those universities that have a sustainability strategy have largely focused on operational improvements, the engagement of staff and students is equally important for creating a sustainable campus. This paper develops a 6-P community engagement framework for promoting eco-centric practices within university campuses. The objective of the study is to apply the framework to a university community in order to establish the validity of this framework. To this end, interviews with staff and students at Bond University were undertaken. The interviews reveal that the 6-P framework is highly applicable to the Bond university community. Interviewees suggest that all 6-P factors (psychological, physical, personal, public perception, price and policies) are relevant and have a positive influence towards an eco-centric behaviour. The framework is useful as a template for other universities in developing a community engagement strategy to fit into the vision of a sustainable campus.