Abstract
Knowledge is basically the first step in the adoption process of green computing. There has been a tremendous energy wastage and a great financial loss around the world due to the lack of knowledge in green computing. Half of the world’s energy wastage is caused by the uninformed practices of users and consumers. It should be made imperative for every organization to design green awareness programs not only to educate but also to change the attitude and behavior of its employees.
This study aims to design, implement and measure the effectiveness or benefits of green computing awareness program. The overall research strategy includes literature review, quantitative and qualitative data collection, statistical analysis of the data using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) 24 followed by a discussion on the results. The research methodology integrated the quantitative methods including independent t-tests and ANOVAs in a stratified random convenient sample of 218 undergraduate students in 2019 in Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
Two surveys were used for the data gathering, one before and the next after the completion of the awareness program. The first survey revealed that although the computer literacy among the students is very high, they have, however, little or no knowledge about green computing. This reflected in the lower score in the other domains like attitude and behavior. Based on the outcome of the first survey, a comprehensive green computing awareness program was planned, designed and implemented. The program included seminar, classroom training, focus-group training and web-based training which was followed by the green computing awareness program. The second survey was carried out to measure the effectiveness of the program. The survey revealed that the green computing awareness program was very effective. The mean score values in all the three domains: knowledge, attitude and behavior had significantly improved. The mean score test also recorded a significant difference in the mean score of the first and the second survey.
Index Terms: Awareness Program, Energy Wastage, Green Computing, Program Effectiveness.
I. INTRODUCTION
Knowledge is essentially considered as a first step in the adoption process of green computing worldwide. It is the key to the information of environment-friendly practices. The consumer knowledge about the environment is the primary factor for green adoption Laroche et al. [12], Rogers [18], McDougall [14]. The concept of green computing is related to the study and practices of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) usage. The study covers the life cycle of green computing viz.
design, manufacture, use and disposal of computing product in eco-friendly manner Murugesan [15].
The aim of Green Information Technology (IT) is to design solutions that can improve the performance of systems which are feasible economically, socially and ethically. Therefore, green IT must take the holistic approach while designing environmentally feasible solutions and it should include the cost of E-Waste management.
Half of the world’s energy wastage is caused by the uninformed practices of users and consumers Jenkin et al. [10]. It is quite necessary that the ICT users must be informed about the various aspects of the notion, i.e. what are the factors that are part of sustainable computing, what are the characteristics
Measuring the Effectiveness of Green Computing Awareness Program
Dr Riyaz Sheikh Abdullah, Department of MIS, College of Business Administration, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
Dr Hassan Qusadi AlMahdi, Department of Business Administration, College of Business Administration, Jazan University, Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
and features that make a computer green and what are the practices that are green compliant with the green initiatives. There has been a tremendous energy wastage and a great financial loss around the world because of the lack of knowledge in green computing.
The university students computing usage contributes 2% to the total global carbon emission Boccaletti [5]. The adoption of IT is enormous in almost all the universities worldwide. It has become an imperative part of the daily practices of administrators, academics, and students in universities. The use of computer hardware, software, edutainment and social media networks by academics and researchers has become an everyday affair. Yet, IT department is considered as the one which consumes most amount of energy affecting the company overhead and also a source of toxic pollutant. It is important that students must not only equip themselves with IT skills but also know how to use them in a responsible and eco-friendly manner. There is an extensive literature available on the increase in Students’ ICT literacy but only little literature is at hand which tells us about environmental impact in relation to the ICT usage. Moreover, the available research helps us to identify only the level of awareness but there is little research which focuses on how to increase the awareness and how to conduct green computing awareness program.
This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature by looking into the extent of students’ knowledge about environmental issues in relation to the ICT use and to conduct green computing awareness program. The aim of this study is to find out the effectiveness of the green computing awareness program on participant’s knowledge, attitude, and behavior.
II. LITERATUREREVIEW
There is adequate research citing lack of knowledge for the adoption of green computing. This has resulted in the excess use of power and has also become the source of toxic waste. This state of ignorance is a major cause of worry for the economies of many countries. Courtney [6] emphasized that the lack of knowledge is the primary reason for the IT Managers for not adopting the green practices. A survey conducted on IT managers in the UK revealed that ignorance about green IT is the major hurdle to the adoption of green practices among them. Only about 18% of managers evaluated carbon footprint before buying new IT systems. Half of them never considered the impact of such a purchase on the environment. There were many managers who were unaware of the green system purchase requirement which shows their ignorance about the green products available in the market.
The students in the universities exhibit a similar kind of irresponsible behavior while using computing resources. In American universities most of the students never shut down their systems. They were unaware of the consequences of such energy misuse on the environment Pearce[17]. Another research by Creighton[7] reported that about 80% of the students were leaving their computers ON all the time.
Some universities and schools in the USA, Hong Kong, India, and the UK understand that the green awareness among students is very poor and there is a need for the green computing awareness program.
They have started carrying out several programs for the students to educate them about the green use of IT Murugesan [16].
In Malaysian universities, the results indicated that a majority of the students had little or no idea at all of the green computing and the aspects associated with it. The findings emphasized that there is an urgent need to begin an awareness program aiming at sustainable computing across the universities in Malaysia (Ahmed et al., [2]). The IT has become an integral part of student life today. We can find the impact of IT on their day to day life. The activities like registering for a course, online tutorial, study material, social networking, thesis completion, paying fees, etc. are mostly done by the use of IT. This dependency on IT has increased their contribution to the global carbon footprint. However, most of this can be avoided by educating the youth about green computing.
The Gulf countries too have understood the importance of green computing and have started or about to start its adoption in many sectors. The education sector is certainly no exception. They are investing heavily in the projects that are sustainable environmentally and economically. In the recent years, Saudi Arabia has invested more than $50 billion on renewable energy projects to cut down the burden on oil use and to transform towards green power to meet the growing energy demand (Bloomberg, [4]).
Another study revealed that the organizational factors which included awareness, relative advantage, management support and inadequate resources were the most important dimensions affecting the
adoption of green computing in Gulf universities. This was followed by the environmental context which included the government policy, legislative and regulatory environment and finally, the technology dimension which comprised outsourcing and IT infrastructure (Ahmed [3]).
Recently a study carried out in UAE universities revealed that the computer literacy among university students was high but the adoption of green practices in day to day life was not enough. The author recommended conducting awareness program for increasing their awareness and adoption of green practices (Abugabah et al. [1]).
The majority of the research on green ICT primarily focuses on the awareness level of the user. Most of the studies suggest conducting awareness program to ensure adoption of green computing in practice. However, there is no research available on how to conduct green computing awareness program. There is a need for a comprehensive green computing awareness program focusing not only on the aspect of knowledge but also on the change in attitude and behavior of the participant. This study is an attempt to address this gap on the green computing literature.
III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The type of research was an integration of descriptive, empirical and quantitative research. The overall research strategy consisted of several sequential steps like literature review, quantitative data gathering before and after the awareness program, descriptive and statistical analysis of data followed by a discussion on the findings. The previous research by Kruger et al. [11], Spitzner [19] and Mathisen [13]
strongly recommended the use of survey as a tool for quantitative data gathering method for measuring the effectiveness of awareness program.
Two surveys were used to measure the effectiveness of green computing awareness program. The first survey was carried out at the beginning of the research with an aim to ascertain the current level of awareness about green computing among the students of Jazan University. This also helped to identify the weakest area of green computing, that the students were lacking in. The strategy of awareness program will be highly dependent on the outcome of this survey. Hence, to be more specific, this survey helped to develop green computing awareness program and prioritize the topics to be covered so that the awareness level could be increased.
Based on the outcome of the first survey, the researchers planned and implemented the green computing awareness program. The awareness program included programs such as: seminar, classroom training, focus group training and web-based training. The second survey, followed by the awareness program, was designed to measure the effectiveness of the awareness program. Most of the questions in the second survey were repeated except in the first part where two more questions that were added related to the training participation. SPSS 24 was used to analyze the data against the research objectives.
The effectiveness of the awareness program was tested using SPSS 24 (Field [8], George &
Mallery[9]). The results from the first and the second survey were examined. For comparing the mean between two surveys independent sample t-test and One-Way ANOVA was carried out. All these tests were carried out at a confidence level of 95% as recommended for social science analysis. The observed mean differences were not likely to be due to sampling error, and it was expressed with
"p".(Field[8], George & Mallery[9])
If the p > 0:1 - the observed difference is "not significant".
If p <= 0:1 - the observed difference is "marginally significant".
If p <= 0:05 - the observed difference is "significant".
If p <= 0:01 - the observed difference is "highly significant".
3.1 Sample Selection
The students, mainly from the College of Business Administration at Jazan University took part in the surveys. They were randomly and purposively sampled from the six (06) faculties, studying at different levels from the male and female campuses. The students filled the surveys forms through direct, email
and online google modes. The sample characteristics for both the surveys are shown in the Figure 1 below:
(a)
(b)
(c)
Figure 1: Sample Characteristics for survey 1 and 2
shown in the above chart (Figure 1.a), the samples included students from all 6 programs. More number of students from Business Administration (27%) and MIS (25%) participated in the program because of the higher enrollment compared to other programs. 70% of the total respondents were from the third and the fourth Year which implies that they had spent enough time in the university and were quite familiar with the ICT usage (Figure 1.b). The ratio of male to female respondents was around 60:40 in each survey (Figure 1.c).
After demographic details of the students, the survey contains questions related to the level of computer literacy among the students in accordance with the first objective. This information is the base for knowing the green computing awareness level. It is shown in figure 2 below
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 2: Computer Literacy among students
The ICT literacy reported by the respondents in the university is quite high. 70% of the students reported that they were using computer for more than 3 years (Figure 2.a). About 85% of the students reported that they were using computer and internet for more than 2 hours on a daily basis (Figure 2.b &
2.c). 95% of the respondents reported that they owned 1 or more than 1 computer (Figure 2.d). This indicates that the sample selected for the research possesses adequate computer literacy and hence it is a good sample for green computing awareness program.
3.2 Data Collection Instrument
The overall strategy of the questions (Kruger [11]) was concentrated on testing the students:
Knowledge: what did the students knew about green computing?
Attitude: what do the students believe about green computing?
Behavior: what will the students do about green computing?
For the first survey, a self-administered questionnaire was used with six (06) sections. Section A focused on the demographic details like gender, department and year of study. Section B focused on students’ computer literacy and had four (04) objective questions. Section C included nine(09) Likert items which asked the students to rate their level of knowledge on the following green terms: “Carbon footprint”, “global warming”, “green computing”, “recycling”, “E-Waste”, “Energy Star Rating”,
“KSA Green Policy”, “Cloud Computing” and “virtualization” on a 5 – point scale ranging from None-Very High. Section D contained seven (07) Yes-No-I don’t know items and assessed the objective knowledge of the students on green computing. Section E contained twelve (12) Likert type items related to green computing practices adopted by the university students. The last Section F
contained six(06) Likert type items which questioned the students on their attitude and intentions towards the adoption of green computing.
In the second survey the questionnaire was similar to the first one except it didn’t include section B (students’ computer literacy) and section D (Students’ objective knowledge). It included two additional questions in part A to know whether the respondents had attended any training program, if yes, which training program they participated. A pilot study is conducted to find out the gap and to improve the questionnaire before starting the actual data collection.
For internal consistency of the data, Cronbach’s alpha test was carried out using SPSS 24. For the first survey, the data obtained from perceived knowledge section was α = 0.93, for objective knowledge α = 0.81, for green computing practices α = 0.84 and for attitude and intentions α = 0.94. The findings showed that the data was consistent (α > 0.7). For the second survey, the data consistency for perceived knowledge section α = 0.95, for green computing practices α = 0.88 and for attitude and intentions α = 0.96. The findings showed that the data was consistent (α > 0.7).
IV. DATA ANALYSIS &INTERPRETATION
Based on the research objectives, the tools used for analysis included a combination of descriptive statistics, consistency test by Chronbach’s alpha, Independent Sample T-Test and One-way ANOVA.
Following the objectives of the research, the data analysis and interpretation of the result were divided into three (3) parts as discussed below:
4.1 Objective 1: Awareness Level – Results of the First Survey
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Figure 3: Green Computing Awareness: First survey outcome
The knowledge head was further divided into perceived or subjective knowledge and objective knowledge. The subjective knowledge referred to what the students thought they knew about green computing. The overall mean score for this section was 2.18 out of 5 (Figure 3(a)). However, it is regretted to note that a very high percentage of respondents had Low or No knowledge or idea of the green computing. The least known green computing terms include “Virtualization”, “Carbon footprint” and “Green Computing”. The objective knowledge, talks about what the students actually and correctly knew about green computing, and was assessed through seven (07) Yes-No-I Don’t know items on various Green Computing terms (Figure 3(b)). The overall mean score reported was 2.09 out of 3 which falls between “No” to “I don’t know”. It was observed that a high percentage of respondents reported that they had no idea about the green computing terms posed to them. The results of green practices were aligned with green computing knowledge. A very high number of respondents had never or rarely followed the 12 green computing practices stated in the questionnaire. The overall mean score reported for this section was 2.42 out of 5 which falls between “Never” to “Rarely” (Figure 3(c)). The result obtained from the last section indicated that the respondents had little inclination towards the adoption of green computing. The mean score reported for this head was 2.72 out of 5 which falls between “Disagree” to “Neutral” (Figure 3(d)).
Although computer literacy among the students of Jazan University was found to be very high, their knowledge about the environment and green practices was meager. The attitude and intentions for the adoption of green computing practices is directly related to knowledge. However, a very low number of students showed willingness to adopt green computing practices. The results clearly indicated that there is an urgent need to start GREEN education programs aimed at improving the level of green computing awareness. This initiative could be the most effective way of reducing the campus-wide carbon footprint and thereby the issue of global warming as well.
4.2 Objective 2: The Differences in Awareness Between Sample Subsets - for Two Surveys Based on the findings from first survey, an awareness program on green computing was conducted for a duration of 3 months which was followed by the second awareness survey. The difference in the level
of awareness from first survey to the second survey that was recorded is shown in the following figure 4:
Figure 4: Compare mean score test for two surveys
As shown in the chart, the green computing awareness level had significantly increased in all three areas of the survey viz. knowledge, behavior and attitude. The overall mean score recorded was 4.1 out of 5 which falls in between “high” to “very high”. In the second survey report the mean score in the knowledge and attitude domain was the highest (4.2 out of 5) which was almost double compared to first survey. As stated in the earlier literature, knowledge is the key for the adoption of green practices.
The mean score for the domain – behavior was reported around 4 out of 5 which is “high”.
4.3 Objective 3: The Effectiveness of the Awareness Program - (Statistical Analysis)
A statistical analysis was carried out to find the effectiveness of the awareness program. The mean score between the group of participants before and after the training program were compared and tested using ANOVA and independent sample t test. The result clearly showed that there was a significant difference between the two groups. The participants who attended the training scored higher values in all domains. The comparison of the mean score value for all the domains is shown in the Table 1:
Table 1: Compare means between the groups before and after the training programs
Domain Training N
Mean Std. Deviation
Statistic Std. Error Statistic
Knowledge After 119 4.2348 0.03940 0.42978
Before 218 2.1373 0.02892 0.42699
Behaviour After 119 3.9443 0.05183 0.56538
Before 218 2.4146 0.05038 0.74390
Attitude After 119 4.1567 0.03927 0.42839
Before 218 2.7178 0.07716 1.13918
Overall After 119 4.1121 0.02615 0.28526
Before 218 2.4240 0.03896 0.57517
From the above table 1, it is clear that the group of participants who attended the training program scored higher in all domains compared to the participants of the first survey. The knowledge domain had the mean value of 4.2 for those who attended the training compared 2.14 for those who did not receive any training. The second domain behavior recorded a mean value of 3.9 for the attended group and a value of 2.4 for the not attended group. The third domain attitude also recorded a mean score of 4.2 for the attended group which was higher than 2.7 for the not attended group.
Table 2: Compare mean test between two surveys
Sum of
Squares Df Mean Square F Sig.
Knowledge
Between Groups 15.079 79 0.191 1.108 0.368
Within Groups 6.717 39 0.172
Total 21.796 118
Behaviour
Between Groups 8.764 36 0.243 1.548 0.053
Within Groups 12.892 82 0.157
Total 21.655 118
Attitude
Between Groups 6.241 22 0.284 0.865 0.638
Within Groups 31.478 96 0.328
Total 37.719 118
Overall
Between Groups 8.511 100 0.085 1.404 0.208
Within Groups 1.091 18 0.061
Total 9.602 118
As shown in the table 2, the domains show significant difference between groups viz: Knowledge, behavior and attitude. The first domain is significantly different at the level of p=0.368, the third domain is significantly different at level value of p=0.638 and the second domain is significantly different at the level of p=0.053. This means that those participants who attended the training program scored higher than those participants who did not attend the training. The overall rating for those participants who attended the training was recorded higher and it was found remarkably different at the level of p=0.208.
V.CONCLUSION
This research has highlighted the state of green computing knowledge and practices followed by university students, specifically in the context of Saudi higher education. The study reveals many interesting findings related to the effectiveness of green computing awareness program. First, the computer literacy among the students surveyed was quite high and hence it validated that the sample selection was appropriate for conducting further research.
Second, the first survey clearly indicated that there was lack of knowledge about green computing among the university students. This was well reflected in their attitude and behavior as well. The least known green computing terms included “Virtualization”, “Carbon footprint” , “Green Computing”
etc. Therefore, the concept based on the previous literature “knowledge is the key for adoption” is proved here as well. The findings evidently concluded that there was an urgent need for green computing awareness program. Based on the recommendation of the first survey, a green computing awareness program was planned, designed and implemented with a series of training programs viz.
seminar, classroom training, focus group and web based training.
Third, the second survey was conducted after the implementation of green computing awareness program to check the improvement in the respondents on the adoption of green computing practices.
The survey revealed that there was significant improvement with regard to the awareness of green computing terms, attitude and behavior of the respondents. The statistical analysis which was carried out to measure the effectiveness of the green computing awareness program clearly showed that there was an appreciable difference in mean score value of the first and the second survey. The participants who attended the training scored higher values in all domains. The compare mean score value test also showed that there was notable difference in the level of awareness of attended and not attended group of participants.
To conclude, the green computing awareness program had exceptionally increased the level of green computing awareness among the students. This remarkable difference was also observed and reported by the lab instructors and faculty members that the use of green practices among the students had drastically improved their green computing awareness. This initiative could be the most effective way of reducing the campus-wide carbon footprint and thereby the issue of global warming as well.
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