Invisible commuters: assessing a university's eco-friendly transportation policies and commuting behaviours

To assess the efficacy of a private university's environmentally friendly transportation policies, we administered a transportation and energy-use phone survey to a random sample of faculty, non-professional staff, and off-campus students. Statistical findings confirm that our sample population exhibits the Environmental Attitudes & Behaviours (A-B) and Behaviours & Behaviours (B-B) Splits observed in past studies. Those most likely to report environmentally friendly attitudes/behaviours are also the most likely to commute longer distances and in larger cars. Moreover, the least-compensated university sub-population, non-professional staff (i.e., office support, grounds keepers), is significantly more likely to contribute to a dramatically larger per-capita percentage of the university's carbon footprint from commuting. University pro-environment transportation alternatives at the time of this study did not consider directly this commuter sub-group's structural disadvantages. This incongruence in goals and execution reflects an institutional variant of the A-B Split explained by the New Institutionalism perspective.