THE EFFECT OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS ON STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN GREEN CAMPUS INITIATIVES: EVIDENCE FROM A BUSINESS FACULTY IN EASTERN INDONESIA

Abstract

Higher education institutions are increasingly adopting green campus initiatives to advance the Sustainable Development Goals, but student participation is often suboptimal despite the availability of environmentally oriented facilities and programs. Previous research has generally examined student engagement and environmental awareness as separate predictors, leaving their combined influence, particularly among students in non-environmental disciplines such as economics and business, largely unexplored. This study examines the partial and simultaneous effects of student engagement and environmental awareness on participation in green campus initiatives among students at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Khairun University, Indonesia. A quantitative exploratory design was employed using a structured Likert-scale questionnaire distributed to respondents selected through stratified random sampling across the departments of Management, Accounting, and Development Economics. Data were analyzed using multiple linear regression in SPSS. Both student engagement and environmental awareness were found to significantly and positively predict student participation. Both predictors, when combined, explained a significant portion of the variance in participation, as demonstrated by the statistically significant regression model. This study offers new and simultaneous evidence on engagement and awareness among business students, a population whose curricula still lack sustainability content. Faculty should combine sustainability integration in the curriculum or extracurricular activities with experiential engagement opportunities to strengthen green campus participation among non-environmental disciplines.