The moderating effect of spirituality on the relationship between intention and sustainable behaviour among university students

University students are the determinants of Malaysia's future. They will be the leaders of tomorrow and it is important for public universities to determine what their perceptions, attitudes and behaviour are towards sustainability. This research focused on the improvement of sustainable behaviour among university students based on the issues and problems related to it. In this regard, the study explored the effect of knowledge, attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control as predictors of sustainable behaviour regarding effectiveness and efficiency. The notion of spirituality has received a somewhat little concentration in tertiary education sustainability studies. Therefore this study proposed and analysed the moderating effect of spirituality through which university students can improve their sustainable behaviour. In addition to that, the mediating effect of intention was also examined on the relationships between the predictors and sustainable behaviour. The research used the quantitative method through a survey instrument and 956 usable questionnaires were collected from the students of 7 public universities in Malaysia based on the UI Green Metric World University Ranking. The Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyse the data. The findings indicate that subjective norm and perceived behavioural control are significantly related to sustainable behaviour. However, knowledge and attitude are insignificantly related to sustainable behaviour. The results also reveal that intention significantly mediates the relationships between the predictors and sustainable behaviour. In addition, the findings show that spirituality moderates the relationship between intention and sustainable behaviour. These results provide valuable insights to both practitioners and the academia to further understand the effects of the predictors, intention and spirituality on sustainable behaviour. Finally, the research limitations are discussed and suggestions for extended areas of research are recommended for future researchers.