Perceptions of the academic community on the performance of sustainable development initiatives in higher education

Since the UN Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm in 1972, higher education institutions (HEIs) have been adapting to assume their social role in supporting societies in promoting sustainable lifestyles. However, HEIs are complex institutions composed of several interdependent subsystems. Sustainable improvement requires holistic assessment measures to comply with established goals. To date, few studies have focused on comparing the different perceptions of sustainability in HEIs and considering the views of the academic community in shaping the efforts and better disseminating sustainable development initiatives. To fill this gap, this work aimed to implement a methodology that compares the perceptions of sustainability and the implemented actions among members of HEIs to show the discrepancies between perceptions and facts. Many studies report either the perception of members of the academic community or the technical assessment of the sustainable performance of the institution in isolation. The novelty of this work lies in developing a tool that allows the use of a similar scale to compare the perception of users of academic services with the valuation attributed by technicians responsible for implementing sustainable development initiatives at HEIs. Analysing of these results enables the identification of dimensions with discrepancies, guiding managers as they carry out actions to promote greater community engagement in implementing sustainability initiatives that boost the consolidation of these values in the institutional culture. Additionally, it is highlighted that the proposed methodology could be adapted for use in other types of institutions, maintaining the same benefits described here.