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Considering that knowledge, skills and behavior can influence sustainability efforts, this study aims to assess which personality traits influence one’s sense of feeling connected to nature and presumably make more sustainable choices. The study also explores the situational factors that might pose barriers, despite an individual's preference for a sustainable lifestyle.

In total, 54 faculty members from six Higher Education Institutions in Bangladesh were interviewed based on a semi-structured questionnaire on the barriers to a sustainable lifestyle in Dhaka city, while their personality traits were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Big Five Factors and the Connectedness to Nature Scale through a survey.

The results state that Empathic Concern and Fantasy, as dimensions of empathy, have strong positive correlations with feeling connected to nature. The physical, social and psychological challenges also cause fewer people to lead a sustainable lifestyle, despite feeling highly connected to nature.

Sustainability efforts need to be context-specific due to localized challenges the people face. While educators play a key role in mainstreaming sustainability, generalizing the findings of the study to the wider population is limited. Further investigation to explore demographic and socioeconomic factors will provide key insights to the determinants of sustainable behavior.

The findings highlight that educational institutions can play a key role in the development of empathy and sustainability education, while addressing the need for good governance and policies in mainstreaming sustainability for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030.

Few studies have been conducted to understand sustainable behavior in Bangladesh and identify effective methods to promote sustainability. This study provides insights to sustainable behavior in the context of a least-developed country. Additionally, it will support educational institutions to work toward sustainable development by enabling empathic skills development in curricula, leading to more concrete sustainability efforts.

The emergence of artificial intelligence technologies, like ChatGPT, has taken the world by storm, particularly in the education sector. This study aims to adopt the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology to explore how effort expectancy (EEC) and performance expectancy (PEE) individually, jointly, congruently and incongruently affect higher education students’ intentions and actual uses of ChatGPT for their learning.

An advanced methodology – polynomial regression with response surface analysis – and a sample of 1,461 higher education students recruited in Vietnam through three-phase stratified random sampling approach were adopted to test developed hypotheses.

Both EEC and PEE were found to have a direct positive impact on the likelihood of higher education students’ intention to use ChatGPT, which in turn promotes them actually use this tool for learning purposes. Conversely, a large incongruence between EEC and PEE will lower the level of intentions and actual uses of ChatGPT for learning. However, when there is a growing incongruence between EEC and PEE, either in a positive or negative direction, the likelihood of students’ intentions to use ChatGPT for learning decreases.

Some practical implications are subsequently recommended to obtain advantages and address potential threats arising from the implementation of this novel technology in the education context.

This study shed the new light on the educational setting by testing how higher education students’ intentions to use ChatGPT and subsequent actual uses of ChatGPT are synthesized from the balance between high EEC and PEE.