This study examines how decision support systems contribute to sustainability awareness, attitudes, and behavioral intentions among university students. While decision support systems have been widely adopted in higher education for institutional decision-making, their role in shaping students' sustainability awareness and behavioral intentions remains underexplored, particularly in Middle Eastern contexts. A quantitative cross-sectional research design was employed to collect data from 393 students at Taif University, Saudi Arabia. The results demonstrate that perceived ease of use significantly influences perceived usefulness and sustainability awareness. Perceived usefulness strongly affects sustainability awareness and attitude. Sustainability awareness serves as a critical mediator, significantly influencing both attitude and behavioral intention. Moreover, attitude emerges as the strongest predictor of behavioral intention. This study advances technology acceptance model by positioning sustainability awareness as a key mediating construct in sustainability education contexts, demonstrating that decision support systems adoption facilitates cognitive transformation and environmental identity development. Practically, universities should integrate decision support systems as pedagogical tools within sustainability curricula, prioritize user-friendly design to reduce cognitive load, and invest in decision support systems infrastructure as high-yield educational assets for promoting pro-environmental behaviors. This study bridges technology acceptance and environmental psychology, offering novel empirical evidence on how digitally mediated learning environments shape sustainability cognition and behavior in higher education, with relevance to emerging sustainability frameworks in the Middle East.
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