Living sufficiency of older adults in Finland: intergenerational practices for sustainable futures

Abstract Planetary crises compel us to critically reassess our lifestyles, values, and worldviews. Sufficiency has gained prominence in sustainability discourse, reflecting a shift from consumerist paradigms toward culturally embedded, value-driven responses to ecological challenges. This study examines sufficiency in the everyday lives of older adults and the meanings they attach to it. It explores how older generations’ life experiences might support sustainable lifestyle adoption. The research employs qualitative methodology, drawing on twelve thematic interviews analyzed through content analysis. Sufficiency emerges not as an individual choice but as a historically and culturally constructed, communal, value-oriented practice expressed through frugality, self-sufficiency, helping others, and nature connection—not primarily as conscious sustainability pursuit, but adapted to life’s realities and a source of meaning. Interviewees viewed sufficiency as part of an intergenerational value heritage and a socio-ecological worldview encompassing spatial, ethical, and temporal dimensions. By illuminating how sufficiency is lived and understood within a specific social group, this study contributes to knowledge production in socio-ecological practice. It deepens understanding of how culturally embedded values shape sustainable behavior. Furthermore, it broadens sufficiency research beyond consumption choices, policy instruments, and economic models toward a cultural and intergenerational heritage perspective.