Sustainability Awareness in the UAE: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper investigates the level of sustainability awareness among university students in the UAE. This research proposed and implemented an experimental digital awareness platform to educate students and citizens in the United Arab Emirates on the 17 goals of sustainability. This study presents the survey results before and after using the proposed mobile application focused on sustainability. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed digital platform in increasing awareness by conducting experiments using the platform and analyzing the survey results. Our survey results indicate that a large proportion of the participants, 49%, had no idea what the 17 SDGs are. The user experience of our digital platform showed that 93% of participants became aware of the 17 SDGs and were willing to contribute to achieving one or more SDGs. Additionally, the use of our platform encouraged 75% of the participants to be actively involved in SDG activities and events.