대학생 음주소비 경험과 의미의 현상학적 탐구: 대전지역 대학생을 중심으로

This study adopts a phenomenological research approach to examine the sociocultural meanings, characteristics, and lived contexts of alcohol consumption among university students. It explores how students perceive drinking, what motivates their alcohol use, how they practice alcohol consumption in everyday settings, and how these experiences lead to individual and collective outcomes. In-depth interviews were conducted with ten university students in Daejeon, South Korea, and Giorgi’s phenomenological analysis procedure was applied. The analysis identified four major dimensions-perceptions, motivations, behaviors, and consequences-each encompassing several thematic categories. First, students perceived drinking as a means of forming social bonds, achieving emotional release, and expressing identity, while also recognizing negative aspects such as health risks, financial burdens, and implicit social pressure. Second, their motivations reflected multifaceted psychosocial dynamics, including the pursuit of belonging and relief, sensory pleasure, social skill acquisition, and coping with relational expectations. Third, their drinking behaviors involved self-regulation strategies, adaptive responses to social interactions, pragmatic consumption choices, efforts to build emotional intimacy, and the extension of drinking experiences through digital platforms. Fourth, alcohol consumption functioned both as a source of social connection and emotional healing and as a site of invisible coercion and psychological tension, revealing diverse consumer needs expressed through drinking experiences. These findings demonstrate that university students’ alcohol consumption constitutes a multilayered consumer culture in which autonomy, sociality, and identity intersect. The study offers a foundation for promoting healthier and more balanced drinking cultures among young adults.