IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/endesu/v15y2013i1p177-197.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Happiness as a harmonising path for bringing higher education towards sustainability

Author

Listed:
  • M. Escobar-Tello
  • Tracy Bhamra

Abstract

This paper is a reflection of an innovative project that complements existing higher education for sustainable development (HESD) approaches within universities by providing an alternative path to embed sustainable lifestyles within the student population. It presents the SLEUTH project; an initiative born out of the need to reduce energy consumption of students at university but that, due to its systemic design, transforms and goes beyond purely energy reduction and brings Happiness as an approach to build sustainable lifestyles. This is the distinct feature of this initiative, proposing it as adding value to existing HESD approaches. The paper describes and discusses the collaborative building process, implementation and results in detail. The experiences gathered during the project are used and analysed through ‘participant observation’, ‘documents’, ‘questionnaires’ and ‘theme-ing coding’ techniques as a means to understand the richness and diversity of the data resulting from a combination of formal and informal learning settings. Through empirical evidence, this analysis presents ‘real life’ evidence to suggest, firstly the initiative’s design success, its impact on energy consumption and contribution to happiness and sustainable lifestyles. Secondly, a successful example for the contribution to existing HESD frameworks that move away from indoctrination and instead leans towards pro-activeness, self-organisation and voluntary collective action. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Suggested Citation

  • M. Escobar-Tello & Tracy Bhamra, 2013. "Happiness as a harmonising path for bringing higher education towards sustainability," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 177-197, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:177-197
    DOI: 10.1007/s10668-012-9382-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-012-9382-4
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10668-012-9382-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bhaskar Nath, 2003. "Education for Sustainable Development: The Johannesburg Summit and Beyond," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 231-254, March.
    2. Veenhoven, Ruut, 2004. "Sustainable consumption and happiness," MPRA Paper 11279, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lorenz Probst, 2022. "Higher Education for Sustainability: A Critical Review of the Empirical Evidence 2013–2020," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-24, March.
    2. Kirsi Hakio & Tuuli Mattelmäki, 2019. "Future Skills of Design for Sustainability: An Awareness-Based Co-Creation Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-24, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Németh, Nikolett, 2018. "A Fenntartható Élelmiszer-Fogyasztás Promóciója: Elmélet És Gyakorlati Példák," Journal of Central European Green Innovation, Karoly Robert University College, vol. 6(1).
    2. Paul Ofei-Manu & Satoshi Shimano, 2012. "In Transition towards Sustainability: Bridging the Business and Education Sectors of Regional Centre of Expertise Greater Sendai Using Education for Sustainable Development-Based Social Learning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(7), pages 1-26, July.
    3. Florian Lüdeke‐Freund & Stefan Gold & Nancy M. P. Bocken, 2019. "A Review and Typology of Circular Economy Business Model Patterns," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 23(1), pages 36-61, February.
    4. Alexandros Flamos, 2010. "The clean development mechanism—catalyst for wide spread deployment of renewable energy technologies? or misnomer?," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 89-102, February.
    5. Constantin Popescu & Silvia-Florina Popescu & Cristina Stroe, 2010. "Consumption For The Fulfillment Of Human Life," The AMFITEATRU ECONOMIC journal, Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania, vol. 12(28), pages 530-545, June.
    6. Aisha Khurshid & Danish Ahmed Siddiqui, 2020. "Ethical Consumption and Happiness: Evidence from Pakistan," Research in Business and Management, Macrothink Institute, vol. 7(1), pages 33-65, February.
    7. Bhaskar Nath, 2008. "A heuristic for setting effective standards to ensure global environmental sustainability," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 471-486, August.
    8. Achilleas Mandrikas, 2020. "Teaching SDGs Using Concept Maps in Primary Teacher Training," Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, , vol. 14(2), pages 205-234, September.
    9. Alexander Gorobets, 2011. "The global systemic crisis and a new vision of sustainable human development," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 759-771, August.
    10. Yomna M. Sameer & Suzanna Elmassah & Charilaos Mertzanis & Lujain El-Maghraby, 2021. "Are Happier Nations More Responsible? Examining the Link Between Happiness and Sustainability," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 267-295, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:endesu:v:15:y:2013:i:1:p:177-197. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.