A Study on Awareness and Source of Knowledge on Sustainable Consumption Amongst the Students of Gauhati University,Assam

As part of a sustainable aware food consumer philosophy, environmental and health awareness varies to different degrees across societies or nations. Based on consumer behavior, the primary objective of this paper was to see the relationship between the target group's perceived actual health and environmental awareness. A survey using questionnaires was used to 95 students at Gauhati University in Assam. Using a structured questionnaire and descriptive statistical analysis, the research showed different degrees of awareness impacted by academic exposure, social media or peer discussions. Surprisingly, the study examined the emerging role of digital environments particularly the metaverse as an important platform for sustainability education. As virtual ecosystems evolve, the metaverse offers immersive, interactive spaces that can induce real-world consequences of unsustainable behaviors. It may also promote responsible consumption patterns. This integration of traditional and digital learning features highlights the need to incorporate advanced digital tools in educational strategies. Also, it showed the importance to enhance awareness of sustainable practices. The findings suggest that conventional sources like classroom learning and social media remain dominant. But it also showed the metaverse could become a transformative medium in imparting sustainable thinking among digital-native youth. The findings concluded that health and ecologically conscious food consumption among students is interestingly low. That indicating a need of development, with higher education playing a crucial role in this area. This study is focused towards assessing the awareness of students about sustainable business practices and their sources of knowledge about sustainability. The result revealed that most of the students are aware of sustainable consumption and also encouraging sustainable consumption. Despite of this they seem to have a unclear idea about sustainability to some extent, also as far as source of knowledge of sustainability is concerned, majority of the students said they came to know about sustainability from various social media. This study is conducted with the prime objective of gaining the comprehensive understanding of perceptions of students about the importance of sustainable consumption. It seeks to explore how students interpret the concept of sustainability in their daily consumption habits and to what extent they consider it important in the context of environmental and social responsibility. Furthermore, the study aims to investigate the factors that influence students' intentions to purchase sustainable products. This includes examining their motivations, awareness levels, and possible barriers that may affect their decision-making process. By analysing these aspects, the research intends to provide valuable insights into the behavioural patterns and attitudes of students toward sustainable consumption. Various statistical tools such as graphical comparison for the likerts scale and for others chi square test, fisher’s test have been applied as per the nature of the data.