Consumo sustentável: Estudo da influência de um curso de administração no comportamento dos seus alunos

Abstract

Sustainability is currently an unavoidable topic when it comes to defining public policies or taking decisions that affect the public domain. In the business universe, and organizations in general, it is also no longer possible to ignore this issue due to the constraints imposed by laws and regulations, consumer demand, competitive pressure resulting from the existence of competing companies that already incorporate the principles of sustainability in their its strategy or the requirements of agents operating in the financial market. The path to sustainable development also implies the sustainable behavior of consumers, remembering that citizens, in general, also play several other roles, namely when inserted in the multiple organizations that make up today's societies. Education institutions, especially those at a higher level, cannot ignore these realities and need to know their impact, and define the role they intend to play in this situation. Taking this context into account, the present work aimed to measure and compare the sustainable consumption behavior of final students (semester 6 and later) and beginners (semesters 1 and 2) of an administration course and to know their perception on the sustainability content of the course. For this purpose, quantitative research was carried out through the application of a questionnaire, constructed from the SOS scale by Fabricio, Veiga and Marchetti (2017), which obtained 232 valid responses. The results showed that the sustainable consumption behavior of senior students does not show significant differences in relation to the behavior of beginning students. In addition, according to the perception of graduating students, the sustainability content of course subjects and activities is reduced and has little impact on their consumption behavior.