Guest editorial

Abstract

Social sciences and campus sustainable development This short overview provides a rationale for the special issue on social sciences and campus sustainability development. Each manuscript's unique contribution is identified and select benefits of drawing on the social sciences to overcome campus sustainable development challenges are described, to catalyze additional efforts to increase social science uptake by campus sustainable development leaders. Why a special issue on social sciences and campus sustainable development? Transitions toward sustainable development, whether on higher education (HE) campuses or beyond, cannot be achieved without social innovations. People are at the core of sustainable development challenges and, thus, must be at the core of their solutions (Becker and Jahn, 1999; ISS/UNESCO, 2013; Petersen-Boring and Forbes, 2014; Mascia, 2016). Because of the social sciences' focus on human behavior and interactions, they are uniquely positioned to provide insights into the social innovations that are so urgently needed. And yet, the use of the social science theories, perspectives and empirical findings to support sustainable development has been limited, including on HE campuses. The majority of HE sustainable development programs are based on intuition or experience and few are evaluated to determine if they are meeting their objectives. The lack of use of the social sciences to help meet campus sustainable development goals is particularly paradoxical because universities and colleges conduct the majority of social science research, prepare the next generation of sustainability leaders and entrepreneurs and nurture the formation of new life habits that students will carry forward with them. Thus, HE institutions not only have the expertise and resources, but also have a responsibility to model how the social sciences can be drawn on to transition campuses to sustainability. About the special issue We know that there is a gap between the natural science information available and the use of this natural science information to inform decisions (Stokes, 1997; Cash et al., 2006), including within sustainable development contexts (Lemos et al., 2012). This gap may be even larger for social science information. Among the reasons for this gap are a lack of understanding of, as well as misperceptions about, the social sciences by sustainability leaders (Bennett and Roth, 2015). The primary goal of this special issue was therefore to help reduce these particular barriers by illustrating how research from a range and combination of social sciences can advance campus sustainable development in a variety of ways. In response to the special issue call in early fall 2014, an impressive number of over 110 abstracts were received for consideration, reflecting great interest in the social sciences and campus sustainable development. The authors of 17 abstracts were invited to submit a manuscript for the special issue and about 47 were asked to contribute to an accompanying book (Leal Filho and Zint, 2016). Abstracts were selected for the special issue based on their quality and to showcase a range of disciplinary social science approaches, applied to a variety of campus sustainable development challenges. The