UNA HERRAMIENTA PARA LA EVALUACIÓN DEL COMPORTAMIENTO AMBIENTAL DE ESTUDIANTES EN INSTITUCIONES DE EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR.

Abstract

More institutions of higher education are striving to become sustainable organizations. Overall environmental attitude of an institution is a reflection of collective behavior of different campus constituents. This paper explores the feasibility of the usage of Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) as a tool to understand how such collective behavior of one of the constituents, students, can emerge from individual local interactions. ABM is a bottom-up method that explores the connection between local interactions and the collective behavior. For that reason, it is critical to develop an interaction rule that reflects on the way a student actually meets with other students. Actual student profile data gathered at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) is used as a validation tool. This preliminary model gives insight on the nature of the sensitivity of the students’ receptiveness for accepting/rejecting information and also the initial distribution of students’ awareness level on environmental concerns required to achieve a sustainable campus. A unique, novel and intuitive modeling method to assess changes of the campus environmental attitude is provided. The methodology has also the ability to provide insight by conducting a series of bottom-up “what if” simulations to understand the causes that define the level of environmental attitude of campus.