The Green Erasmus project published a survey highlighting the behaviour of students on mobility. It reveals an attitude-behaviour gap and possible way forward.
The Green Erasmus project, which aims at improving the environmental sustainability of the Erasmus+ programme as well as raising awareness across the European Higher Education sector about the importance of sustainable internationalisation, has published its first survey report. The study compared the students’ behaviour while at home with their behaviour during their mobility. Over 10’000 students from 40 countries, who participated in an Erasmus exchange in the last 3 years, have taken part in the survey. The results show that there is a significant attitude-behaviour gap: The students are (very) concerned about the environment and the climate, but they tend not to change their actions in order to be more environmentally friendly while going on mobility.
The survey addresses the consumption patterns of students together with travel habits and tourism patterns. The purpose of this study was not only to map the students’ habits, but also to understand the barriers that students perceive when it comes to living in a more sustainable way. Lastly, the survey also addresses the believes, attitudes and norms of the students regarding climate change.
When looking at the difference between consumption behaviour at home and on exchange, it seems that students express a more sustainable behaviour while on mobility. For instance, 43.2% of students commute by foot while on exchange (whereas only 28.3% walk to university while at home). Nevertheless, with regard to the way students consume on mobility, they are more attentive to the price than to the quality, which can result in buying products that might not be environmentally friendly. The main issue relative to sustainability thus remains the fact that students travel mostly by plane, using the low-cost airlines, when going to the destination country and coming back home. At the same time, however, when traveling during the exchange, students tend to choose to take the train or the bus more often than while at home. In order to incite students to take greener means of transportation, the new Erasmus+ programme has put in place a few measures such as financial incentives for instance (students who travel by green transport receive up to 50 euros more; the Swiss programme for Erasmus+ also offers a green travel top-up). However, this initiative does not seem to convince the students. Ruben Sansom, the Clean Mobility Coordinator of Generation Climate Europe, mentioned that even with the additional financial aid given, planes are still more attractive since they are much cheaper than trains and more convenient. He suggested giving students a version of the Interrail ticket, which would enable them to travel from their home to the country of destination. The Coimbra Group, an association of long-established European multidisciplinary universities of high international standard, has developed a pilot initiative that goes in the same direction. Students can purchase an Interrail mobile Global Pass with an important discount and use it to travel by train to and/or from the host university, as well as to use it to explore the surroundings while on mobility. Erasmus by train, a student led-initiative, also aims to link the Erasmus and Interrail programmes in order to foster greener mobility. Furthermore, the overall objective is to build a positive image around slow travel in order to create a profound change in students’ practice.
The Green Erasmus project will continue its work by creating an online platform for students to inspire and motivate behavioural change before, during and after the mobility by providing information material on how to be more sustainable while on mobility. On the platform, it will be possible to sign a petition, which aims at addressing students’ wishes to policy makers in relation to greener student mobility. Besides the focus on students, the Green Erasmus project also intend to develop an education framework for environmental sustainability, which will offer solutions on how to include the topic in curricula for instance. The results of this research will be published in a guidebook available at the end of the project, in winter 2022. Lastly, in order to foster civic engagement and intercultural dialogue between international students and locals, a toolkit and activity guidelines will be established by mid-2022. These guidelines will address how to set up environment sustainable activities.
In Switzerland, Movetia, the national agency for the promotion of exchanges and mobility in the education system, also encourages greener mobility and published a greener mobility kit to support HEI. A list of different initiatives were collected in a brochure to promote best practices. For example, several Swiss higher education institutions have established foreign travel regulations for business/professional trips to encourage the use of greener means of transportation.