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Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.

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How do employee pro-environmental behaviors relate to the perceived success of workplace environmentally sustainable activities?

Description

For decades, understanding the complexity of behaviors, motivations, and values has interested researchers across various disciplines. So much so that there are numerous terms, frameworks, theories, and studies devoted to understanding these complexities and how they interact and evolve into actions. However, little research has examined how employee behaviors translate…

For decades, understanding the complexity of behaviors, motivations, and values has interested researchers across various disciplines. So much so that there are numerous terms, frameworks, theories, and studies devoted to understanding these complexities and how they interact and evolve into actions. However, little research has examined how employee behaviors translate into the work environment, particularly regarding perceived organizational success. This study advances research by quantitatively assessing how a greater number of individual employees’ pro-environmental behaviors are related to the perceived success of environmentally sustainable workplace activities. We have concluded that the more pro-environmental behaviors an employee embodies, the more positively they perceive the success of their local government's sustainable purchasing policy. Additionally, other factors matter, including organizational behaviors, like training, innovation, and reduction of red tape.
ContributorsFox, Angela (Author) / Darnall, Nicole (Thesis advisor) / Bretschneider, Stuart (Committee member) / Behravesh, Shirley-Ann (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2022-04-19
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Developing a Cooperative Food Business for Food-Insecure University Students

Description
Food insecurity among university students in the U.S. is a pressing sustainability problem due to its prevalence, complex socio-economic drivers, and adverse effects. A national survey from the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that 45% of university students (n=86,000) had experienced some form of food insecurity in…

Food insecurity among university students in the U.S. is a pressing sustainability problem due to its prevalence, complex socio-economic drivers, and adverse effects. A national survey from the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that 45% of university students (n=86,000) had experienced some form of food insecurity in the past 30 days (Goldrick-Rab et al., 2019). Students at Arizona State University (ASU) are similarly impacted by this sustainability problem—a recent study found that approximately 35% of ASU students have experienced food insecurity (Bruening et al., 2016). Food insecurity has a variety of detrimental effects on university students’ physical health, psychological well-being, and academic achievement (El Zien et al., 2019; Payne-Sturges et al., 2018; Meza et al., 2019), and these resulting issues have complex inter-regional, intrageneration, and intergenerational implications.
To mitigate food insecurity among university students, the project proposes the development of a sustainable, student-run food cooperative business at Arizona State University (ASU). Food cooperative businesses have long been utilized by communities to advance food access, economic self-determination, and food justice (DePasquale, Sarang, & Vena, 2017), so the project aims to lay the foundation for the establishment of such an enterprise at ASU. Through the development of an enterprise start-up plan and the execution of preliminary coalition-building efforts, the project seeks to demonstrate the plausibility of this solution while empowering stakeholders with the strategies needed to enact it.
Created2021-04-28

Sustainability Consultation Report: Shepley Bulfinch

Description
Buildings have many negative effects on the environment and people. The development industry needs to reduce those impacts to improve sustainable outcomes. Opportunities for the biggest gains in sustainable development begin with design professionals like Shepley Bullfinch, a national architectural firm. The firm is engaged in this project to assess…

Buildings have many negative effects on the environment and people. The development industry needs to reduce those impacts to improve sustainable outcomes. Opportunities for the biggest gains in sustainable development begin with design professionals like Shepley Bullfinch, a national architectural firm. The firm is engaged in this project to assess current sus-tainability performance in business operations and design processes. This project includes a three-part sustainability assessment of the firm, stakeholder engagement session using the ABCD-procedure of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD) (Broman, 2017), and an assessment of three peer firms for comparison. The final deliverable of this pro-ject is a sustainability consultant report which compiles all of the information gathered about Shepley Bulfinch and the three peer firms, a writeup of the engagement session, an example of what a sustainable architecture firm could look like, and recommendations and resources to implement sustainability principles and strategies. The outcomes of this project found opportunities for improvement and provided recommendations for strategic action for the firm. This project has the potential to help Shepley Bulfinch become more sustainable in business oper-ations and positively affect millions of square feet of buildings through their design and devel-opment process.
ContributorsWager, Tari (Author)
Created2019-05-15

The Environmental, Social, and Economic Impacts of Remote Work

Description

COVID-19 brought so much uncertainty into the world and has molded this project into what it is today. The first project journey that was chosen was meant to show the impact of how much plastic waste was being produced at Starbucks. Then due to COVID-19 yet again, it changed into…

COVID-19 brought so much uncertainty into the world and has molded this project into what it is today. The first project journey that was chosen was meant to show the impact of how much plastic waste was being produced at Starbucks. Then due to COVID-19 yet again, it changed into how much paper waste there was within the State of Washington Department of Licensing (DOL) Business and Professions Division (BPD). DOL BPD is a state agency division that licenses over forty plus professional and business licenses to the residents of Washington state. Due to the pandemic, the project transformed into how the three pillars of sustainability impacts remote work within BPD. BPD is in this new and unique paradigm where the deliverable that was brought forth as this project completed are, “The 9 Benefits of Sustainability through Remote Work” (Appendix D) where this specifically showed DOL why remote work is sustainable and how it should be implemented even further throughout the agency. This list was put together with the benefits that best fit DOL BPD.
ContributorsReynolds, Jordan (Writer of accompanying material)
Created2021-02-11