Promoting Home Economics in the Digital Age: Empowering Families and Communities through Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Sustainable Development
Lupambo Chishala *
Rockview University, Chibombo, Zambia.
Malvern Kanyati
Rockview University, Chibombo, Zambia.
Eluide Masamba
Rockview University, 10 Miles Campus, Chibombo, Zambia.
Emmanuel Malichi
Rockview University, E Campus, Chibombo, Zambia.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Digital technologies offer home economics new ways to teach practical capabilities, support household decision-making and connect community enterprises with markets. Their contribution to empowerment and sustainable development nevertheless depends on conditions that are frequently obscured by measures of access, engagement or entrepreneurial intention. This critical narrative review examines how digital innovation can strengthen home economics without narrowing its social purpose to technology adoption or individual responsibility. Literature published from 2008 to 31 July 2026, together with a foundational contribution on empowerment, was identified through web-mediated scholarly-index searches, citation tracing and authoritative institutional records. The synthesis distinguishes research conducted within home economics from adjacent evidence on financial education, digital entrepreneurship, food provisioning, clothing repair and sustainable consumption. Direct disciplinary research illuminates pedagogical and organisational challenges but provides limited evidence of sustained household-level effects. Stronger experimental evidence from related fields supports some improvements in financial behaviours and specific provisioning practices, while also showing that knowledge, confidence, control over resources and aggregate environmental outcomes do not necessarily improve together. Online participation can widen opportunities yet reproduce inequalities in equipment, time, care responsibilities and institutional authority. Entrepreneurship may support livelihoods, but sales growth alone does not establish empowerment, decent work or reduced material consumption. An integrated capability-oriented approach is proposed that combines supported access, embodied learning, meaningful decision-making power, accountable digital services and outcome-sensitive evaluation. Priorities include comparative hybrid-learning trials, longer-term household and enterprise follow-up, measurement of unpaid cognitive labour, and evaluation of absolute resource use rather than platform activity. Digital home economics is most defensible as a supported public and community capability, not as a replacement for material provision, professional judgement or collective responsibility.
Keywords: Family and consumer sciences, digital literacy, household agency, practical pedagogy, community enterprise, sustainable consumption, care work