From intention to action: student and faculty perspectives on private and public campus pro-environmental behavior

Universities increasingly promote sustainability, yet environmental intentions do not consistently become private or public action. This qualitative study examined how university students and faculty in eastern China understood the personal, social, pedagogical, and institutional conditions shaping campus pro-environmental behavior. Four focus groups with 20 undergraduate and graduate students from arts and science disciplines and 10 semi-structured faculty interviews were analyzed using a hybrid deductive-inductive framework approach informed by an institutionally situated extended Theory of Planned Behavior. Six interrelated themes showed that intention was necessary but conditional on situated agency, habit, workload, convenience, health, safety, and institutional support. Perceived behavioral control was analytically distinguished from institutional reliability: the former concerned participants' appraisals of capability and opportunity, whereas the latter concerned whether facilities, procedures, information, and response systems actually worked. Public participation additionally required collective efficacy grounded in student voice, visible outcomes, organizational continuity, and institutional responsiveness. Environmental knowledge became actionable when local, practical, and linked to meaningful opportunities. Co-designed living laboratories emerged as a participant-generated proposal, not an intervention conducted in the study. The findings explain how curriculum, operations, and governance jointly condition private and public environmental action.