The Critical Factors Affecting Campus Sustainability Using Fuzzy Delphi Method

Abstract

Since the Brundtland report in 1987, the concept of sustainable development (SD) has become better known and has caused organizations to be more concerned about environmental issues. Therefore, organizations have adopted three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental, to reduce the negative impacts upon the environment from their operations. Not only do business organizations implement the concept of sustainability, but higher education institutions also see the importance of sustainable development. Therefore, universities integrate the SD concept with their obligations teaching and research, in order to be responsible for their actions toward society and to promote environmental protection. Hence, this study aims to determine the critical factors of evaluating SD for achieving campus sustainability based on experts’ perspective. The Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) is employed to screen the key critical factors to achieve campus sustainability through experts’ consensus. The analysis result indicates “Healthy campus environment†is the most important criterion. It implies the environmental factors such as “Hazardous materials managementâ€, “Pollution preventionâ€, and “Municipal solid waste management†should be first emphasized for universities in planning strategies to improve and strengthen their campus sustainability.