What Factors and Educational Activities Can Encourage Students to Adopt Sustainable Behaviors? Evidence from Poland

As agents of change and future decision-makers, students will be responsible for implementing the principles and goals of sustainable development. Therefore, it is crucial that they acquire the necessary competencies to engage in sustainable practices, and academic education plays a key role in this regard. In this article our aim is to identify the factors and educational activities that would most effectively encourage students to adopt sustainable behaviors. To this end, a survey was conducted on a sample of 1604 management students at Polish universities. The following statistical methods were used to analyze the raw data: descriptive statistics and box-and-whisker plots, the Mann–Whitney U test, the Kruskal–Wallis test, Dunn’s post hoc tests, and structural equation modelling. It was identified by students that financial benefits were the most effective declared factor to motivate pro-environmental actions. In turn, the actual factor of encouraging students to adopt behaviors consistent with the principles of sustainable development was found to be the promotion of pro-environmental practices and attitudes during lectures and seminars. This factor was the only one in the structural equation model to yield a statistically significant and positive path coefficient (0.684 *). The frequency of adopting sustainable development practices varies depending on gender, high school background, place of residence, and attitudes toward sustainable development. Our research represents one of the first nationwide studies in this field.