“a Newfound Sense of Agency”: Students’ Experiences of Reducing Consumption and Consumerism

This paper will describe possibilities for change in consumption and consumerism amongst a group of master’s students who participated in an intervention to reduce their ecological footprint. The intervention was implemented across three cohorts (2021-2023) of students in an environmental psychology course. Diaries, spreadsheets and course assignments submitted by the students were analysed to determine whether the intervention resulted in a reduction of their ecological footprint and to generate themes about how the students experienced the transformative effect of the sustainable practices they chose on their consumption. We consider how theories on consumerism relate to our findings and indicate possibilities for bringing about sustainable behaviour patterns.