Social Learning of Sustainability in a Pandemic—Changes to Sustainability Understandings, Attitudes, and Behaviors during the Global Pandemic in a Higher Education Setting

Abstract

When people learn from each other and change their behavior accordingly, this is called social learning. COVID-19 not only taught us new habits to limit contagion, imposed restrictions also limited people’s everyday practices and behavior. Our study aims to analyze how (much) the pandemic may have incidentally fostered social learning of sustainability (SLS), representing a shift from rule-based behavior and forced behavior changes to more associative and potentially long-lasting sustainable behavior. To answer this question, we analyzed data from two mixed-method surveys with which we approached two customized samples in a higher education setting in Australia (n = 100) and Austria (n = 264). The findings show that in a higher education and, specifically, a university context, there are less sustainable practices evaluated as stable and “new normal” than assumed. Still, sustainability is more rule-related and less associative, predominantly in Australia. Nevertheless, a certain degree of awareness of what sustainable practices are can be observed mainly in Austria. As a broader implication, the study at hand leads to the conclusion that through COVID-19, sustainability at least became more tangible. Furthermore, universities as a specific institution have the potential to put sustainability higher on their agenda and take responsibility for social change. In the conclusion and outlook of the paper, limitations of the study as well as future research potential on social learning processes for sustainable development are presented and discussed.