From ‘Night on the Town’ to Lockdown : Exploring Student Night-time Economy (NTE) Experiences and the Role they Play in What it Means to be a Student Today

King, Molly and Cronin, Anne and Moore, Karenza (2025) From ‘Night on the Town’ to Lockdown : Exploring Student Night-time Economy (NTE) Experiences and the Role they Play in What it Means to be a Student Today. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Night-time economy (NTE) experiences are among the first non-academic, social experiences students have at university. Freshers’ Week, designed to welcome students to university, is saturated with NTE engagement, conflating the two as if an introduction to student life were an introduction to nightlife. Considering this association, there has been surprisingly little academic focus on how students experience the NTE, and the wider significance of these experiences, especially given their well-established importance in young people’s lives more generally (e.g. Hollands, 2016; Roberts, 2015; Smith, 2013). This thesis addresses this gap by investigating how students experience the NTE, and the role these experiences play in what it means to be a student today. I employ a multi-method approach, including the innovative use of Snapchat-based video diaries, to gather insights from thirty undergraduates at a pre-92 English university. I uncover how student NTE experiences are collectively shaped by space, time and studenthood (termed as such to refer to the life stage as well as identity and institutional elements of university life), departing from purely spatial understandings. I argue that these three components operate as an interconnected nexus, which I propose can operate as a conceptual framework to deepen understandings of student NTE experiences. Drawing on these insights, I offer new perspectives on narratives regarding the “student experience” and student-as-customer debates. Though initially disruptive, the COVID-19 pandemic became an opportunity to investigate how this “nexus” responds to external forces, (re)shaping students’ NTE experiences and their intersection with university life. The context is also significant, given the challenges the NTE industry has faced in recent years, including COVID-19 and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Accompanied by changing student drinking habits and “value for money” a key narrative about higher education, it is more important than ever to understand nuances and significance of student NTE experiences.