This study investigates why individuals shift from socially accelerated to

decelerated consumption, a question that has received limited theoretical attention

despite its growing practical and environmental meaningfulness. Social

acceleration describes a structural condition in which the pace of technological

change and everyday life continuously increases, driving capitalism's circle of

production, distribution, and consumption in a self-reinforcing cycle. Yet a growing

countermovement toward slower, more deliberate, and quality-oriented

consumption is increasingly observable.

While existing literature has identified four potential triggers for this shift,

mindfulness, culture, economic situation, and personal values, the mechanisms

through which they operate, and the reasons why the shift remains underexplored.

The existing theoretical framework treats these four components largely as

independent and parallel triggers without accounting for how they interact.

This study addresses this gap through a qualitative, inductive investigation based

on 20 unstructured interviews. The findings reveal that financial disruption is the

most consistent initiating trigger, not because it constrains purchasing power but

because it breaks the seamlessness of accelerated consumption and drives deliberate

evaluation of purchases. The deliberation produces a quality orientation through

lived experience rather than prior values, which feeds into growing resistance to

trend cycles. Creates a reorganisation of priorities through life transitions, and the

gradual absorption of decelerated norms from the social environment.

Environmental awareness and mindfulness emerge as consequences of the process

rather than its causes.

The shift consolidates because it produces a fundamental identity transformation.

The values built through sustained, deliberate consumption become integrated into

the self concept, so that decelerated consumption persists not through willpower but

as the natural expression of who one has become, reframing deceleration as a

process of identity formation rather than simply a behavioural change.