Empowered through digital social media: exploring university students' perceptions and engagement with sustainability practices

This study examines how social media enables Tanzanian university students to adopt sustainable practices. Using social cognitive theory and an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we address two research questions: (1) What are students' perceived social media empowerment factors and their engagement with sustainability practices? (2) How do these empowerment factors contribute to sustainability engagement? Descriptive analysis (n=510) revealed that social media serve as powerful tools for resource access (mean score=4.31, 94.12% positive), self-expression and control (mean score=4.09, 88.82%), and participation in virtual sustainability discussions (mean score=4.05, 83.33%). Structural equation modelling showed that self-expression and control were the strongest predictors of sustainability-related collaboration (β=0.797), community outreach (β=0.817), and behavioural change (β=0.827, p