Selection of a sustainability awareness project in an academic institution using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP )

The past decade (2005–2014) was the decade for the Education for Sustainability (EfS) declared by the United Nations, in view of the spread of sustainability awareness. The literature argued that one of the rapid ways of achieving spread of sustainability awareness is to educate students who are more adaptive and eager to learn and who could be turned into more aggressive and revolutionary spreading agents of the ‘sustainability awareness’ practices. In that too, lead might be taken by management and social sciences students because their working field is society itself, and thus they could be more confronted and inclined towards decision-making and social interactions role, as compared to other disciplines. This article demonstrates one of such efforts where selection decision about the sustainability awareness projects lies in root in an academic institution to make students learn about sustainable development concepts and practices. The finding of the study suggests that out of three significantly relevant projects the ‘Reuseactivity Project’ was found to be the best alternative when evaluated on multiple criterion like cost, faculty involvement, time and impact. The analysis used was the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), being one of the highly used multi-criteria decision analyses. The findings were further cross-checked under what-if (sensitivity) scenarios for its robustness amidst different criteria variations.