Environmental Factors and Academic Performance: The Mediating Effect of Quality of Life

Abstract

The study of students’ academic performance has gained much recognition internationally where it has drawn the attention of educational researchers, particularly in the previous decade. As such, this study examined the impact of the environmental factors on student’s academic performance at the University Malaysia Kelantan (UMK) city campus. It described three environmental factors, consisting of infrastructure and services; pollution and healthy environment and environmental hazard, with quality of life as a mediator. This is a survey type of study by distributing questionnaires randomly to 300 fourth-year students; however, only 200 returned and usable questionnaires were received. The study used the regression and correlation analysis to analyse the data. The result of the study shows that all variables significantly impacted academic performance of students. The result also indicates that all the variables were consequential in affecting the students’ quality of life (QoL). Since this is the first effort to look at the challenges at the UMK city campus, it offers useful inputs into the causes so that UMK and other academic institutions can take actions to provide a better environment and QoL for students in order for them to reach their fullest academic performance potential. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.