علوم محیطی (Dec 2018)
The study of the barriers and strategies of the green university development as perspective of faculty members in university college of agriculture and natural resources, University of Tehran
Abstract
Introduction: A green university is a university that considers health, safety and environmental matters in all its activities, including education, research, and all existing services (e.g., administrative, financial, laboratories, workshops). This kind of university can efficiently use resources and consumables to achieve the goals of sustainable development of the community. To prevent environmental crises and move to a healthy environment, the role of higher education institutions is very important. The present study was conducted with the main purpose of analyzing the barriers and strategies for developing the green university from the viewpoint of faculty members of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University of Tehran. Material and methods: This research is a research based on Structural Equation Modeling which was performed by confirmatory factor analysis. The statistical population of the study consisted of faculty members of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University of Tehran (N=230). Based on the Cochran formula, 140 people were selected by simple random sampling method, from which 123 questionnaires were selected for the analysis. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to collect data. Validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by the opinion of some faculty members of the University of Tehran. To determine the reliability of the research tools, a pre-test was used. The calculated Cronbach's alpha for the barriers and strategies for the development of the Green University were 0.87 and 0.89, respectively. Results and discussion: The results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that among the five factors of the green building development barriers, the green education component (factor loading = 0.98), and among the five components of the green campus development strategies, the green research component (factor loading coefficient = 0.88) had the most important role in explaining the barriers and development strategies of green campus from the viewpoint of the faculty members of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the University of Tehran. Conclusion: Overall, the results of this study showed that there are many effective barriers and strategies for the development of the green university. Based on the findings of the factor analysis, for barriers, green education, green university management system, green human resources system, green research, and environmental management system were the most important factors, respectively. Also, for the strategies, the green research, green university management system, environmental management system, green human resources system, and green education were the most important factors, respectively.
