Sufficiency: A systematic literature review
本文系统梳理了充足性概念,分析其与不同经济尺度(微观与宏观)及经济主体(消费者与生产者)的关联,强调需跨尺度与主体理解充足性,以推动可持续经济。
The making of sustainable economies calls for sufficiency in production and consumption. The discussion, however, lacks a shared understanding on what it means to operationalize sufficiency. In this article, we review and analyze the concept of sufficiency with a focus on its linkages to different economic scales (with a focus on micro- and macroeconomics) and economic actors (particularly consumers and producers). Altogether 307 articles were screened, resulting in a final data set of 94 peer-reviewed articles. In addition to the core assumption of ‘enoughness’, we found three premises describing the concept: (1) complementarity of capitals, (2) social metabolism, and (3) altruism. In the reviewed literature, sufficiency is understood as both an end in itself and a means for bringing consumption and production within ecological limits. By conducting the first systematic literature review on sufficiency, the study explicates a more integrated understanding of sufficiency and highlights the need to treat sufficiency across economic scales and actors. In future research, empirical work should be emphasized to grasp the contextual varieties in the operationalization of sufficiency.