Sufficiency in social practice: searching potentials for sufficient behavior in a consumerist culture

Abstract

To live a life of sufficiency in a consumerist culture may be one of the most ambitious experiments an individual could undertake. To investigate this challenge, we employed a social-practice approach. This article is based on 42 qualitative interviews asking respondents why and how they acted in a sufficient way within a Western infrastructure and culture. The results indicate that sufficiency-oriented people draw on particular meanings in everyday-life practices when adopting relevant resource-extensive actions. These understandings encompass an amalgam of environmentally friendly attitudes, positive social intentions, and/or personal commitments to thriftiness. We further identified a set of specific practices-including sharing, recycling, and reusing-as useful for the adoption of a sufficient lifestyle. For our respondents, many of these sufficiency practices occurred regularly in daily life and were rarely questioned. Using an additional survey, we show that these routines lead to less resource-intensive lifestyles and demonstrate how a small group of people has been able to habitually adopt sufficiency practices. However, the majority does not see a need for more frequent implementation of such routines because daily decision-making processes are widely focused on the consumption of products.

Assessing the Potential of Sustainable Value Chains in the Collaborative Economy

“…The sufficiency effects lie actually at the crux of environmental effects of Uber and the likes, much more than efficiency effects [47,48]. The resource efficiency inherent to services like Uber could contribute to more sufficient ways of consumption on both a macro level [49] and on individual level [50]. For example, if consumers have to pay per car use rather than only or mainly when purchasing a car, they tend to reconsider their desire to use.…”

Pioneers’ Insights into Governing Social Innovation for Sustainable Anti-Consumption

“…They are less likely to have personal debts compared to consumers with more materialistic concerns [31]. Voluntary simplicity incorporates the idea of not consuming more than is necessary for satisfying human needs, conceptualized as voluntary sufficiency [15,32,33]. Consumers practicing simplistic lifestyles report that activities of collaborative consumption support their lifestyles [33].…”

“…Voluntary simplicity incorporates the idea of not consuming more than is necessary for satisfying human needs, conceptualized as voluntary sufficiency [15,32,33]. Consumers practicing simplistic lifestyles report that activities of collaborative consumption support their lifestyles [33]. Collaborative consumption refers to non-ownership-based access to products through sharing, borrowing, swapping, or renting within social communities or commercial settings [34,35].…”

“…On an interpersonal level, the social influence of and support by others are highlighted for voluntary simplicity [55,56]. For a collective movement, supportive sociocultural and institutional factors are necessary [12,33,57], for instance through providing space for experimentation [11]. Pedagogical processes and knowledge exchange allow the acquisition of competencies among consumers, initiators, and participants [11,32].…”

“…Pedagogical processes and knowledge exchange allow the acquisition of competencies among consumers, initiators, and participants [11,32]. Furthermore, communicative action supports the acceptance and adoption of alternative sustainable behavior [11,33]. Leadership, organizational structure, and strategies to facilitate cooperation and resources of initiatives matter on the group level [12,58].…”