Engaging higher education institutions in the challenge of sustainability: sustainable transport as a catalyst for action

Over the last decade, higher educational institutions (HEIs) have become more conscious of their performance on sustainability. For many, this has not been an easy transition. This article focuses on a case study of an Australian university program aimed at leveraging staff/student behavioural change and wider institutional change by starting with sustainable transport (ST) in a context where the case study university was coming from a low base on sustainability outside teaching activities. The case study research program aimed to (1) engage with internal and external stakeholders identified with barriers and facilitators to ST, (2) encourage more ST behaviours via explicit Travel Plan strategies and (3) utilize the project to embed ST policy and programs institutionally and act as a catalyst for more extensive and integrated sustainability performance across a multi-camps university. In terms of strategic choice of the case study, this project was the first under the State Government (of Victoria, Australia) HEI TravelSmart program to embrace both staff and students in a ‘whole of campus-community approach’ to sustainable transport. The methods adopted – using behaviour change activities, travel plan, staff/student surveys and approaches identified with the TravelSmart brand – were not restricted to a social marketing interventions model, but took on an advocacy/feedback approach informed by stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984 ;  Freeman, 2009) and a stakeholder policy advocacy strategy using a mixed method ecological social marketing model (Halpern et al., 2004). Over a period of four years the funded research facilitated a complex action-oriented case study that achieved some progress towards improved sustainability in travel behaviour and university policies, programs and capital works to address barriers. The participatory design fostered formal and informal networks that developed organizationally to foster environmental politics and develop a form of institutional ecological citizenship (Dobson, 2003) within the steering committee, and in terms of external advocacy. Matched university and government sourced research funding that financed a behaviour change and stakeholder engagement strategy and buy-in from key internal stakeholders, were key facilitators of organizational changes in policy, resourcing and organizational commitment to sustainability.