Enabling sufficiency policy in municipalities: a multiple-methods analysis

Seven of the nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed, and humanity faces the risk of irreversible ecological damage. In response, sufficiency has emerged as a relevant sustainability strategy to complement extant efforts focused on technology centered solutions. The growing body of sufficiency research builds on the premise that technology centered strategies alone are not enough to reduce emissions or halt biodiversity loss at the required speed and scale. The need for policies geared toward sufficiency is echoed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which in its latest report explicitly acknowledges sufficiency as a strategy alongside efficiency and renewable energy.Sufficiency scholars have recognized the importance of municipalities as sustainability actors and their potential role in advancing sufficiency, yet have paid little attention to researching municipal sufficiency policy. This thesis notes three main research gaps. First, there is a lack of unified understanding of what sufficiency policy means in general and at the municipal level in particular. Second, empirical knowledge about the occurrence of sufficiency policies in municipalities especially in rural areas and their enabling and hindering factors remains sparse. Third, there is a lack of empirical evidence on public support, a crucial enabler for municipal sufficiency policy.This cumulative thesis responds to these gaps by conceptually and empirically exploring sufficiency policy in municipalities, addressing the overarching question of how municipal sufficiency policy can be enabled and strengthened. Article I develops a definition and conceptual framework of sufficiency policy based on a comprehensive and systematic literature review. The literature review also produces a catalog of 198 municipal sufficiency policy measures, demonstrating that municipalities possess numerous levers to pursue sufficiency. Article II applies this definition and framework to empirical field work. Drawing on qualitative interview data from rural municipalities in Switzerland, it explores sufficiency in municipal practice. The article highlights both key enablers and major barriers and identifies 542 individual sufficiency measures, revealing a multitude and diversity of sufficiency measures, but no overarching sufficiency strategy. Article III investigates factors and levels of public support for municipal sufficiency policy using a Swiss-wide representative survey. The findings indicate that citizens' preferences are shaped by policy design and framing factors, and reveal modest though consistent majorities in favor of sufficiency policy measures.This thesis contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it clarifies the concept of sufficiency policy in general and how it applies at the municipal level in particular, thereby advancing understanding of municipal sufficiency policy. Second, it provides extensive empirical evidence on the occurrence, enablers of, and barriers to municipal sufficiency policy, with particular attention to public support. Methodologically, the thesis adopts a multiple methods approach that integrates a systematic literature review of 111 sufficiency related publications, extensive qualitative data from 46 expert interviews with municipal policymakers across rural Switzerland, and survey embedded experimental data. Specifically, it includes original survey data from 1,052 Swiss citizens, combining a choice and a survey experiment. In addition, this thesis makes tangible practical contributions by creating a comprehensive database and offering empirically grounded insights to support municipalities in designing and implementing sufficiency policies. The hope of this thesis is to provide fruitful building blocks for future sufficiency and sustainability policy research, as well as practical and inspiring guidance for citizens and policymakers in municipalities and beyond who seek to advance sufficiency policy.