Abstract:

Teaching with a Purpose of Solidarity is an educational innovation project funded by the University of Valencia. This project is aimed at students in the Business Administration Degree (GADE) at the School of Economics, specifically in the Consumer Behavior course offered by the Department of Marketing and Market Research. Through this innovative teaching proposal, students can apply the knowledge and skills acquired in previous degree subjects, as well as in this course, to design social marketing strategies for generating engagement, donations, and the ability to analyze the motivations and behavior of individuals collaborating with an NGO. The main goal is to raise awareness among students about the negative effects that consumption can have on society and, specifically, in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as the existence of organizations whose purpose is not the sale of for-profit products and services, but the defense of social causes linked to the SDGs and the community's well-being.

In line with the content incorporated this year on "Consumers and social well-being, SDGs, and Social Marketing," students have been trained for the first time that "consumer behavior can be harmful to individuals and society" (Solomon, 2017). A key point in this process is undergraduate students’ attitudes towards sustainable consumption since they are an essential group that can motivate changes inside their homes and organizations where they will work.

Students were asked to complete a questionnaire individually, indicating which activities in their consumption they considered to favor or worsen the achievement of the SDGs. A total of 150 valid questionnaires were obtained, corresponding to students in Spanish, Valencian, and international language groups. Content analysis was performed on this information to "identify and categorize people's opinions to detect their attitude" (Kirilenko et al., 2018). For this analysis, the QSR International NVIVO software package was used (Gutiérrez et al., 2013), which identified both the main codes/themes of the different activities proposed and the number of times each was mentioned, providing an idea of the most relevant activities that can contribute to or hinder the achievement of the SDGs. The most representative words of the activities proposed by students were summarized through word clouds. In addition, the results have allowed the detection of the level of interpretation of the SDGs and the placement of actions in various SDGs, concluding that the SDGs are not mutually exclusive. Likewise, no clearly defined attitude or interpretation of the SDGs has been detected, highlighting a lack of understanding on the part of students.

Acknowledgment:
Innovation Teaching Projects: UV-SFPIE_PIEE-2733279 y UV-SFPIE_PIEE-2733624

Keywords:

Sustainable development goals, innovation, solidarity, non profit organization, content analysis.