If you want to study with us, partner with us or learn more about our research and initiatives, please get in touch with the team.
Deakin Better Consumption Lab
Drive responsible and sustainable consumption patterns for the future
How our research addresses global consumption challenges
Global consumption patterns are becoming increasingly unsustainable, with wealthy nations excessively consuming and straining resources, leading to ongoing social and environmental challenges. The Deakin Better Consumption Lab helps businesses and governments address the world’s consumption challenges by providing insights to support sustainable consumption, healthy consumption and consumer wellbeing, and fair consumption for all.
Our research areas
We explore ways of making consumption more sustainable, from motivating consumer adoption of environmentally friendly products to understanding how consumers make decisions about environmental outcomes.
Sustainable consumption
We explore ways of making consumption more sustainable, from motivating consumer adoption of ‘green’ products to understanding how consumers make decisions about environmental outcomes.
Healthy consumption
Our researchers work with organisations to motivate health-enhancing behaviours in nutrition and physical activity while also uplifting service interactions in healthcare settings.
Just consumption
We examine why consumers adopt unethical consumption behaviours, while also exploring unfair business practices that harm consumers.
Tackle the world’s overconsumption problems
Are you interested in ensuring sustainable consumption practices for generations to come? Undertake a graduate research degree at Deakin and work alongside renowned research supervisors making a global impact.
Our team
Our team of experienced researchers is passionate about understanding behaviour and finding innovative solutions to the world’s consumption challenges.
Professor Josh Newton is the founder of the Deakin Better Consumption Lab. He conducts research in two broad areas: supporting consumers and communities in transitioning to renewable energy technologies; and helping consumers achieve physical activity and nutrition guidelines.
Associate Professor Jeff Rotman is the director of the Deakin Better Consumption Lab. He focuses on understanding the psychological foundations of morality and how individuals make moral judgments and decisions.
Professor Ahmed Ferdous is an internationally recognised scholar known for his research on how business-led initiatives, particularly those centred on stakeholder engagement, service innovation and responsible marketing, driving societal impact.
Professor Chris Dubelaar conducts research exploring how people interact with the food environment and how that environment changes their food choice and consumption behaviour.
Associate Professor Nichola Robertson’s research specialises in how services can enhance human wellbeing. She is particularly recognised for her work on unsatisfactory and harmful consumer service experiences.
Dr Jay Zenkić's research interest is in consumer well-being, with a particular focus on how people perceive and use money and how they respond to un/fairness.
Dr Paul Harrison’s research is focused on how we make decisions. He is the director of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and a member of other panels.
Featured projects
Our projects reflect our three key pillars and help us drive meaningful outcomes in the communities we serve.
National evaluation of nutritional serve pricing
Most Australians don’t meet recommended fruit and vegetable intakes. Pricing fruit and vegetables per ‘nutritional serve’ could better signal true consumption costs and encourage healthier eating. We worked with AusVeg, Ritchies and IGA to explore the impact of nutritional serve pricing on fruit and vegetable consumption.
How people perceive virtual power plants
Our team worked on Project Energy Demand and Generation Exchange to examine how individuals perceive virtual power plants with the goal of understanding how to accelerate their uptake, enhance customer satisfaction, build trust and develop policies that fairly facilitate distributed energy resources exports.
Changing service expectations of Australian customers
Many customers indicated that organisations were often no longer meeting their service expectations. Working with the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, we provided insights into this expectation-experience gap along with evidence-based recommendations for organisations to better deliver for the changing service expectations of Australian customers.
