Beyond Efficiency: Sufficiency Strategies for Sustainable Development in the Housing and Building Sectors

ABSTRACT As the housing and building sectors face the urgent challenge of decarbonization, attention is increasingly shifting beyond conventional efficiency strategies toward the principle of sufficiency. This study explores how sufficiency can reshape the housing landscape, although there is no standardized understanding of sufficiency in these sectors. Through a systematic literature review and supported by qualitative expert interviews with tiny house manufacturers, the research identifies 26 categories of sufficiency measures across the key five value chain stages, from planning and construction to user behavior and policy frameworks. These measures aim to reduce material use, energy demand, and greenhouse gas emissions through spatial, behavioral, and governance‐related changes. The findings show that sufficiency operates as a cross‐cutting transformation strategy that reshapes how housing is planned, built, managed, and used within the broader building sector, thereby enabling structural reductions in resource demand beyond technological efficiency alone. Tiny houses serve as a practical illustration, exemplifying how minimalist design, localized production, and lifestyle adaptation can foster sufficiency and reveal regulatory and structural barriers to implementation. The study identifies structural, regulatory, and perceptual barriers to broader implementation and highlights implications for planning regulations, building standards, and economic incentives. The research agenda calls for a unified definition of sufficiency centered on demand reduction, quantitative assessments of environmental impacts, and enhanced education to bridge the gap between aspiration and practice in sustainable housing and to strengthen the role of sufficiency in sustainable development strategies.