Funding Campus Sustainability through a Green Fee—Estimating Students’ Willingness to Pay

Abstract

Many higher education institutions promote sustainability by instilling environmental awareness within college students, the innovators of the future. As higher education institutions face budgetary constraints to achieve greener campuses, green fees have emerged as an alternative method for universities to encourage student participation and overall campus sustainability. A green fee is a mandatory student fee that funds sustainability projects on campus and is typically managed by a group of students and faculty. We are the first to assess students’ support for a mandatory green using a single dichotomous choice, contingent valuation question and estimating the willingness to pay to fund campus sustainability using a discrete choice model. Using results from a survey at a private college in New York City, we found more support for $5 and $10 green fee values. Using both parametric and non-parametric estimation methods, we found that mean and median willingness-to-pay values were between $13 and $15 and between $10 and $18, respectively. We suggest implementing a green fee between $10 and $13 following the lower values of the non-parametric median willingness to pay (WTP) range estimates that do not rely on distributional assumptions. We hope that other academic institutions follow our research steps to assess the support for a green fee and to suggest a green fee value for their institutions.

University Readiness Analysis Towards Green Campus: A Case Study Using UI GreenMetric

“…Lack of funding policies in implementing the green campus program, due to lack of cooperation partners, the activities carried out are not in line with environmental sustainability, low ability to plan budgets, lack of credibility of campus management, lack of socio-economic conditions, allocation of funds, and how to obtain funds [36,37]. Some campuses do not directly apply the whole concept of green campus program funds, but one by one the indicators are starting to be implemented.…”