A Quantitative Analysis of Green-Building Features Incorporated in LEED-Certified Campus Buildings

Higher education is an idyllically positioned organization from which meaningful
dissemination of knowledge and interdisciplinary research is capable of actuating
practices that resource consumption. Paradoxically, the construction, maintenance, and
operations of the built environment, including the built campus environment, have
contributed to the decline of raw resources and degradation of environmental processes.
An opportunity exists to bridge the knowledge gap between the design and construction
phase and the operations and maintenance phase of the green certified building life cycle,
while examining the parts that contributed to the green-certification of the whole
building. The purpose of this research was to 1.) identify green-building features and
determine their frequency of implementation in new capital (NC) LEED-certified,
campus buildings to effectuate operations and maintenance cost savings, indoor
wellbeing, and environmental stewardship, and 2.) determine the relationships of greenbuilding
feature usage across building, institutional, and LEED characteristics. The study used archival data to document the green efforts of each building with the study’s sample
of 195 buildings on the campus of 107 universities and colleges, in the United States,
between 2007 and 2017.
The study’s findings indicated that the public institutions earned the LEED
certification more often than private institutions and the sample was void of two-year
community colleges. The sample was restricted for green-building features that (a)
reduce economic cost, (b) improve indoor wellbeing, and (c) increase environmental
stewardship. The results and implications are discussed.