Schlesier, H., Schäfer, M., & Desing, H. (2024). Measuring the Doughnut: A good life for all is possible within planetary boundaries. Journal of Cleaner Production, 141447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.141447
The safe and just operating space postulates that it is possible to simultaneously stay within ecological limits and fulfill basic needs. However, evidence that such a state can be achieved given existing population and available technologies is lacking. Here, we attempt to show whether a safe and just space exists by modelling material and energy requirements for satisfying basic needs with various technological scenarios. Environmental impacts of a basket of products representing basic needs satisfaction are measured through life cycle analysis and compared to planetary boundaries for the first time. We find that all planetary boundaries considered can be respected for 8.0 and 10.4 billion people with a probability of 81% and 73% respectively. However, this requires a fossil-free energy system, and an essentially vegan diet as well as no additional cropland conversion.

Hachtmann, M. (2024). Linking sufficiency and the protection of biodiversity: An issue of political implications, framing, descriptiveness and interdisciplinarity? Nature Conservation, 55, 83–102. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.55.118243
The dramatic loss of biodiversity is caused by the use of resources and land. One strategy aiming at reducing the use of resources and land is sufficiency, which consequently could be a strategy for protecting biodiversity. This article therefore examines the extent to which sufficiency in the context of biodiversity conservation is already being addressed by nature conservation associations and the scientific community. To this end, publications were analysed firstly with regards to the understanding of sufficiency, secondly with regards to the considered links between sufficiency and biodiversity as well as thirdly with regards to the considered fields of action.

Creutzig, F., Roy, J., & Minx, J. (2024). Demand-side climate change mitigation: Where do we stand and where do we go? Environmental Research Letters, 19(4), 040201. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad33d3
We provide an overview of an unique set of 22 review papers published in the focus issue of Environmental Research Letters. We also extract a key set of insights, ranging from the varied but rapidly evolving literature to demand-side mitigation potential, relevance for well-being, and consistent categorization of options across end-use sectors. We find that demand-side approaches to climate change mitigation supplement exclusively technology-focused supply side solutions and, in many cases, comprise system-wide effect contributing to well-being and planetary stability. Review studies cover macro-economics, well-being, and sustainable development goals on the metric side, and investigate consumption-based individual options, urban strategies, transport, building, and food sector potentials, but also the role of the circular economy, material efficiency, and digitalization.

Mamut, P. (2023). Sufficiency – an emerging discourse? At the crossroads of mainstreaming and transformation (1st edition). Nomos.
This book argues that while there is scholarly agreement on the relevance of sufficiency as a sustainability principle, there is no consensus about its precise contribution to change. Using discourse analysis, the author shows that sufficiency is also charged with multiple meanings in the context of the practices used in energy and climate model regions. It criticises the fact that the most common interpretation of sufficiency is also the one with the weakest transformative potential and shows how this untapped potential can be unleashed.

Gurtner, L. M., & Moser, S. (2024). The where, how, and who of mitigating climate change: A targeted research agenda for psychology. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 94, 102250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102250
In this article, we invert the current logic of applying psychological theories to mitigate climate change. Instead, we begin by identifying the social change strategies capable of mitigating climate change, such as social tipping dynamics, and then highlight the corresponding knowledge that psychology must create to support and accelerate these dynamics. We suggest that psychology can help to answer the question of “Where to?” – i.e. the direction we should head for sustainability – by identifying the feasibility of consumption corridors. Next, psychology can help to answer the question of “How do we get there?” by producing more knowledge about human capacity for change. Finally, psychology can help to answer the question of “Who will get us there?” by exploring the motivations of three key social groups: activists, experienced individuals, and the affluent.

Jackson, T., Hickel, J., & Kallis, G. (2024). Confronting the dilemma of growth. A response to Warlenius (2023). Ecological Economics, 220, 108089. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108089
This commentary responds to a recent article in this journal purporting to identify the ‘limits to degrowth’. We first clarify and set in context the tensions between growth rates and decoupling rates on which the argument is based. In particular, we show how failing to achieve sufficient decoupling appears to leave society torn between missing our climate targets and crashing our economies. This dilemma highlights the tough choices inherent in the climate transition. But it does not imply that critics of growth endorse economic collapse. On the contrary, the intention of postgrowth scholars is clearly to prevent this collapse by offering structural and social reforms, alongside technological options, as a way of meeting climate targets.

Nathan, H. S. K., Amarayil Sreeraman, B., Hari, L., & Bhattacharjee, S. B. (2024). Towards operationalizing sufficiency. Journal of Indian Business Research, 16(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIBR-03-2024-386
The papers included in this special issue represent several avenues for operationalizing sufficiency. The common message of these papers is that walking faster does not help if we are walking in the wrong direction (Potocink, 2018). Although the notion of sufficiency is not new (Princen, 2005; Thomas et al., 2015), its applications are too few, particularly in developing countries like India. This special issue fills this gap and is a much-needed contribution to bring about the desired paradigm shift in economies toward sufficiency.

Lallana, M., Torrubia, J., & Valero, A. (2024). Metals for energy & digital transition in Spain: Demand, recycling and sufficiency alternatives. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 205, 107597. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2024.107597
This study employs Material Flow Analysis (MFA) to comprehensively forecast metal demand in alignment with energy and digital transition policies at the country level, focusing on Spain. We define and evaluate six scenarios targeting circular economy and sufficiency alternatives aimed at reducing primary extraction. Our results highlight electric mobility as the predominant driver of future metal demand, accounting for 54–92 % of cumulative demand for aluminum, copper, manganese, cobalt, nickel, lithium, dysprosium, and neodymium. From a global justice perspective, the ‘equitable fraction of global reserves’ for lithium and cobalt is surpassed.

Niamir, L., Verdolini, E., & Nemet, G. F. (2024). Social innovation enablers to unlock a low energy demand future. Environmental Research Letters, 19(2), 024033. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad2021
Several studies have argued that the potential for low energy demand (LED)-focused mitigation is much larger than previously portrayed and have shown that adopting a wide variety of energy-reducing activities would achieve emissions reductions compatible with a 1.5 C temperature target. Yet, how realistic achieving such a scenario might be or what processes would need to be in place to create a pathway to a LED outcome in mid-century, remain overlooked. This study contributes to understanding LED’s mitigation potential by outlining narratives of LED innovation in three end-use sectors: industry, transport, and buildings. Finally, we identify a set of eight social enablers required for unlocking LED pathways.

Cristelo, D. (2024). Driving Behavioral Change for an Economic and Social Transition towards more Resilience and Sustainability in Luxembourg. Luxembourg Strategy.
The SOC2050 study conducted from November 2022 to August 2023, assessed the citizens’ interest in transitioning society and the economy in Luxembourg towards greater resilience and sustainability. This study surveyed 912 individuals who participated in a three-wave study over 10 months and who provided rich information about their behaviours and attitudes toward sustainability. We developed an innovative ’sufficiency index’, a scale ranging from 0 to 100, gauging an array of frugal behaviours. The survey also collected in each wave participants’ support towards six hypothetical policies aimed at regulating or taxing unsustainable behaviours The report highlights that pro-environmental behaviour stems from a mix of sociodemographic elements, personality traits, and societal perceptions. Our causal estimation of the effects of communications addressing misconceptions about society’s behaviours shows promise, but probably has short-lived impacts, at least within this study’s communication intensity.

Christ, M., Lage, J., Sommer, B., Carstensen, J., Petersen, D., Böcker, M., Mahrt, L., Brüggemann, H., & Zehrfeld, C. T. (2024). Putting sufficiency into practice: Transdisciplinary sufficiency research in urban development: The Hafen-Ost real-world laboratory in Flensburg, Germany. GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 33(1), 26–34. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.33.S1.5
The city of Flensburg is currently planning to build a new district on a huge redevelopment site. The idea is to create a district with an infrastructure that promotes and enables lifestyles that use resources and land sustainably. The real-world laboratory on sufficiency-oriented urban development described and evaluated here aimed to better understand the process of implementing sufficiency policies and their effects, and to develop the knowledge and skills needed for sufficiency-oriented policymaking. The real-world laboratory is a collaborative project between members of the city administration and academics from the Europa-Universität Flensburg. The evaluation shows both the difficulties of putting sufficiency policies into practice and their potential for sustainability.

Boström, M. (2020). The social life of mass and excess consumption. Environmental Sociology, 6(3), 268–278. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2020.1755001
The article uses social science theory and literature to theorize mass and excess consumption. The purpose is to contribute a conceptual framework for studying how institutions and mechanisms of social life drive and reproduce patterns of mass/excess consumption, and to discuss the potential for bottom-up transformative processes to move us away from excess consumption. The article discusses material and non-material institutions and focuses in particular on how mechanisms in social life reproduce patterns of mass/excess consumption. Bottom-up processes of transformative change and their potential to challenge patterns of excess consumption are analysed through the lens of transformative learning.

Jouzi, F., Levänen, J., Mikkilä, M., & Linnanen, L. (2024). To spend or to avoid? A critical review on the role of money in aiming for sufficiency. Ecological Economics, 220, 108190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108190
The role of money in the reduction of consumption is complex and largely an unclear phenomenon. In this paper, we critically review the concept of money in sufficiency research, categorize its appearance in solutions and problems, and map out the sufficiency aspects of money in a suggested framework. Our results show two conflicting perspectives among scholars. Many developed solutions in sufficiency literature are money-dependent and aim to refine current organized economic activities towards sustainability goals. In contrast another group of solutions suggest avoiding money and all money transactions for pursuing sufficiency.

Suski, P., Palzkill, A., & Speck, M. (2023). Sufficiency in social practices: An underestimated potential for the transformation to a circular economy. Frontiers in Sustainability, 3, 1008165. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2022.1008165
To date, the circular economy has fallen short of its promise to reduce our resource demand and transform our production and consumption system. One key problem is the lack of understanding that highly promising strategies such as refuse, rethink, and reduce can be properly addressed using research on sufficiency. This article argues that a shift in focus is required in research and policy development from consumers who buy and handle circularly designed products to consumption patterns that follow the logic of sufficiency and explain how sufficiency-oriented concepts can be incorporated into existing social practices.

Korsnes, M., & Solbu, G. (2024). Can sufficiency become the new normal? Exploring consumption patterns of low-income groups in Norway. Consumption and Society, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1332/27528499Y2024D000000009
This paper discusses the interrelation between sufficiency principles and consumption patterns of low-income groups, exploring how sufficiency could support the needs of vulnerable groups in society. Studying low-income groups offers possibilities for understanding the work that goes into establishing sufficiency-oriented practices and the potential pitfalls of the sufficiency discourse. Through our qualitative study of low-income groups in Norway based on focus groups and interviews, we identify three different characteristics relating to sufficiency.

Bento, N. (2023). The potential of digital convergence and sharing of consumer goods to improve living conditions and reduce emissions. Environmental Research Letters, 18(12), 124014. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad067e
Access to modern energy services (entertainment, food preparation, etc) provided by consumer goods remains unequal, while growing adoption due to rising incomes in Global South increases energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. The current model through which these energy services is provided is unsustainable and needs to evolve—a goal that emerging social and technological innovations can help to achieve. Digital convergence and the sharing economy could make access to appliances more affordable and efficient. This article estimates the effect of innovations around digital convergence and sharing in a highly granular, bottom-up representation of appliances. We simulate changes in demand for materials and energy, assuming decent living standards for all and global warming limited to 1.5 °C. By 2050, these innovations could attenuate the increase in the number of appliances to 135% and reduce overall energy demand by 28%.

Meshulam, T., Goldberg, S., Ivanova, D., & Makov, T. (2024). The sharing economy is not always greener: A review and consolidation of empirical evidence. Environmental Research Letters, 19(1), 013004. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0f00
The digital sharing economy is commonly seen as a promising circular consumption model that could potentially deliver environmental benefits through more efficient use of existing product stocks. Yet whether sharing is indeed more environmentally benign than prevalent consumption models and what features shape platforms’ sustainability remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we conduct a systematic literature review of empirical peer reviewed and conference proceeding publications.

Gough, I., Horn, S., Rogers, C., & Tunstall, R. (2024). Fair decarbonisation of housing in the UK: A sufficiency approach. Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/CASE/_NEW/PUBLICATIONS/abstract/?index=10808
This paper addresses a neglected aspect of the UK housing crisis: how to rapidly but fairly decarbonise the housing stock to meet tough net zero targets while meeting housing needs of the entire population. To do so the authors adopt a radical approach based on sufficiency. The sufficiency approach is based on determining both a housing floor – a decent minimum standard for all – and a housing ceiling - above which lies unsustainable excess. The authors define these thresholds in terms of bedrooms and floorspace and analyse the distribution of housing in England. They find that excess housing is widespread, concentrated in home ownership, particularly outright ownership, and characterised by above average emissions per square metre. They conclude that current policies based solely on energy efficiency and increasing housing supply cannot achieve agreed decarbonisation goals while securing decent accommodation for those who are housing deprived.

Huber, A. (2022). Does Sharing with Neighbours Work? Accounts of Success and Failure from Two German Housing Experimentations. Housing, Theory and Society, 39(5), 524–554. https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2022.2039286
This paper analyses the normalization of everyday sharing practices in two exemplary German neighbourhoods, which both provide numerous opportunities for sharing spaces, stuff, food and mobility carriers, but differ regarding their “philosophy”. The first case belongs to the increasingly popular “collaborative housing” model, the second one is a developer-driven, service-based project. Evidence shows that residents in the collaborative housing case share more frequently, more regularly and over longer timespans than their counterparts in the developer-driven neighbourhood. I argue that this is due to a higher share of fitting practice configurations and a better integration of sharing practices into tenants’ typical patterns of everyday life. 

Arnz, M., Göke, L., Thema, J., Wiese, F., Wulff, N., Kendziorski, M., Hainsch, K., Blechinger, P., & Von Hirschhausen, C. (2024). Avoid, Shift or Improve passenger transport? Impacts on the energy system. Energy Strategy Reviews, 52, 101302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2024.101302
Demand-side mitigation strategies have been gaining momentum in climate change mitigation research. Still, the impact of different approaches in passenger transport, one of the largest energy demand sectors, remains unclear. We couple a transport simulation model to an energy system optimisation model, both highly disintegrated in order to compare those impacts. Our scenarios are created for the case of Germany in an interdisciplinary, qualitative–quantitative research design, going beyond techno-economic assumptions, and cover Avoid, Shift, and Improve strategies, as well as their combination. The results show that sufficiency – Avoid and Shift strategies – have the same impact as the improvement of propulsion technologies (i.e. efficiency), which is reduction of generation capacities by one quarter.

 Yu, A., & Higgins, C. D. (2024). Travel behaviour and the 15-min City: Access intensity, sufficiency, and non-work car use in Toronto. Travel Behaviour and Society, 36, 100786. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tbs.2024.100786
One of the key travel behavioural assumptions in the 15-min City concept is that if daily necessities are nearby, residents would be encouraged to use slower but more sustainable modes, such as walking, cycling and public transit to reach these destinations, thereby reducing car dependence. This research explores non-work car use associated with the 15-min City concept in the City of Toronto, Canada. This work offers important implications for sustainable transportation and land use planning as it appears that residents do use alternative and more sustainable modes when they are associated with sufficient accessibility to all categories of destinations.

Bhatt, K. (2024). Understanding Indian ride-sharing consumers: The role of psychographics and perceived value. Journal of Indian Business Research, 16(1), 98–118. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIBR-05-2023-0157
This study aims to explain the influence of four socio-psychological variables: social comparison orientation, face saving (FS), status consumption (STC) and frugality (FGL) on consumers’ value perception toward ride-sharing services – one of the most widely used collaborative consumption models. Furthermore, it assesses how perceived value affects consumers’ intention to use (IU) the ride-sharing services and intentions to substitute ride-sharing services for using a personally owned car.

Ertelt, S.-M. (2024). Beyond predict and provide: Embracing sufficiency synergies in road freight electrification across the European Union. Energy Research & Social Science, 111, 103498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2024.103498
The challenge of aligning with the net-zero ambitions of the European Union necessitates a critical examination of the road freight transport sector, a pivotal contributor to global commerce and greenhouse gas emissions. Despite the sector’s potential for electrification to mitigate emissions, the prevailing ‘predict and provide’ planning approach may inadvertently reduce this low-carbon transition to mere technological substitution, neglecting deeper intrinsic transport issues. This perspective critiques the ‘predict and provide’ approach and advocates for the adoption of ‘sufficiency-oriented planning’.

Kristiansen, S. (2024). Can Information Change People’s Mind? An Autoethnographic Reflection on my Personal Journey to Veganism. Environmental Communication, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2024.2315177
This autoethnographic essay portrays how a profound change of thinking and lifestyle can be triggered by mass media coverage and how a lifestyle can be sustainably changed although it goes against deeply rooted values and at first glance seems to be highly inconvenient. Considering different meanings of care, I reflect upon growing up with animal agriculture, how information deficit can be a barrier to behavioral change, and the ways a vegan diet matters to climate change.

Aasen, M., Thøgersen, J., Vatn, A., & Stern, P. C. (2024). The role of norm dynamics for climate relevant behavior: A 2019–2021 panel study of red meat consumption. Ecological Economics, 218, 108091. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.108091
This paper contributes to the empirical foundation for understanding the role of norms in shaping, reinforcing, and changing consumption patterns. Drawing on institutional and social psychological theories and research, we investigate the development in normative influences on red meat consumption – a climate relevant behavior – over time. We apply cross lagged SEM analyses utilizing survey data from a representative sample of the Norwegian population the years 2019, 2020, and 2021. Red meat consumption is strongly supported by social norms in Norway but seems to be challenged by the societal attention to its negative climate impacts. Such attention may lead people to internalize norms for a climate-friendly diet and thus reduce their red-meat consumption. We find, however, that the influence of pro-climate mitigation norms on red meat consumption is weak and was further weakened in the 2020–21 period, during the Covid19 pandemic. An important question is whether and how policy measures can nurture pro-climate mitigation norms to reach a social “tipping point” regarding meat consumption.

Sarokin, A. N., & Bocken, N. M. P. (2024). Pursuing profitability in slow fashion: Exploring brands’ profit contributors. Journal of Cleaner Production, 141237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.141237
Circularity has been ineffective in shifting the fashion industry’s ever-growing carbon footprint, as its focus fails to prioritise slowing the cycle of consumption and production. In contrast, the framework of sufficiency explicitly calls to reduce and slow the cycle of production and consumption by ‘making do with less’. The fashion industry’s manifestation of sufficiency is slow fashion, which embodies products that are made to last, and can be serviced to extend lifespan. This study investigates the following: What are the profit contributors of UK slow fashion SME brands?