Author(s)
Sunil Kumar, Amandeep Kaur, Aarti Sharma, Vijay Kumar
- Manuscript ID: 140857
- Volume: 2
- Issue: 7
- Pages: 426–474
Subject Area: Other
Abstract
Green libraries will increasingly need to be more than just a site for resource access. They will need to become sustainable development hubs that combine infrastructure, energy and performance, resources and services, users and scenarios, and environmental behaviour. A simulated cross-sectional survey dataset of N = 350 stakeholders, i.e., students, research scholars, library professionals and faculty members, was used to develop and test an analytical model of green library effectiveness in university libraries. The model considers green building infrastructure and energy efficient building facilities, adoption of renewable energy, waste management, paperless library services, digital resource management, and institutional sustainability policies as independent variables, environmental awareness as mediating construct and sustainable knowledge hub performance as dependent variable. To assess the model, the researchers performed a reliability test, KMO and Bartlett's test, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and multiple regression. Besides these, structural equation modelling, ANOVA, t-test and bootstrap mediation analysis were also performed. The simulation results showed appropriate internal consistency across constructs (Cronbach's alphas greater than .80) with acceptable sampling adequacy (KMO = 0.951) and a valid nine-factor measurement. The study identified digital resource management, sustainable policies, and environmental awareness as the strongest predictors of sustainable knowledge hub performance. The lowest adoption mean was renewable-energy adoption which can be considered a low hanging fruit for institutional investment. The bootstrap mediation indicated that the effects of green library practices on perceived performance are partially mediated through environmental awareness. The proposed paper provides a construct-based framework for evaluating the sustainability-oriented knowledge hubs in university libraries which also leads to relevant recommendations for infrastructural planning, digital service enablement, capacity building of staff, user education and green governance.