Luc Arrondel

Richard Duhautois

Jean-François Laslier

Profit vs. win maximization in a league: a paradox

Keywords: Cournot-Nash equilibrium, oligopoly, sports economics, football

The paper studies a very simple game-theoretical model of sports competition such as the European football leagues. In this oligopoly-type context, the Cournot-Nash equilibrium reveals a paradoxical differentiation between clubs: those that include not only profit but also sporting performance in their objectives end up generating more profit than others who purely maximize profit.

Introduction

According to the English sociologist Richard [START_REF] Giulianotti | A Sociology of the Global Game[END_REF], football has gone through four periods in its history: the traditional period, from the establishment of the rules at the end of the 19th century until the First World War; early modernity, between the wars; late modernity, from the 1950s to the 1980s; and finally the postmodern period, over the last 30 years. At the beginning of the 2020s, we are at the dawn of a new era that we call "hypermodernity". Four elements characterise this period.

The first concerns the economic inequalities, that have grown significantly in the post-modern era, both between clubs in the same league and between different leagues, with the result that national and international competitions are systematically dominated by a few teams that are much richer than the others. The second factor is the arrival of new types of investors in football: private and public investment funds and American investors, who often already own sports franchises in the United States. This change in ownership can have important consequences for the way the post-modern football economy works: football will have to be financially profitable and funds are taking stakes in various teams, which is leading to the formation of more and more 'galaxies' of clubs. The third factor relates to the globalisation strategy of the major clubs, which provides them with increasingly substantial commercial revenues. Finally, the fourth factor is the arrival of new broadcasters (the GAFANs), the proliferation of broadcasting platforms (OTT) and new modes of consumption.

Excluding transfers, clubs' income comes from four main sources: broadcasting rights, ticket sales, merchandising and sponsorship. These revenues have grown significantly since the 1970s, and the relative importance of the different sources has changed considerably over time: ticket sales, which were essential fifty years ago, have gradually lost ground to TV broadcasting rights and sponsorship for the top European clubs.

The economics of football are very specific. Until recently, it produced little or no profit for its shareholders. The objective of the clubs was not solely financial, as owners often bought teams for reasons other than the financial return on their investments. The non-pecuniary reasons for owning a football club did not mean that the search for profitability was absent. However, the recent arrival of new, more 'rational' economic agents could have changed the landscape of economics of football. As Garcia-Del-Barro and Szymanski (2009) suggest: "Is it possible that this group of new owners, driven by the quest for profit, will influence the others, who are more concerned with the number of victories".

So it is fair to say that much work has been devoted to the issue of the actual objectives of football clubs from the empirical point of view. But notice that standard Economics has been early handling this issue at the theoretical level. In particular, micro-economic theory has noticed that nonprofit-maximizing firms acting in an oligopoly may enjoy more profits than their standard profit-maximizing competitors [START_REF] Fershtman | Equilibrium incentives in oligopoly The[END_REF]. This paper will provide a striking example of this phenomenon. In an extremely simple model of sports competition of the type of European soccer leagues, we will show that clubs that include in their objective not only profit but also sporting performance end up generating more profit than the others, for whom profit by itself is the sole objective.

The objectives of football clubs

The standard (neo-classical) hypothesis of the theory of the firm postulates that its main objective is to maximize profit. Thus, sports economists most often consider that in North America, owners of professional sports franchises maximize their profit (Rottenberg, 1956, Fort and[START_REF] Fort | Cross subsidization, incentives and outcomes in professional team sports leagues[END_REF]. In European football, however, this assumption is much more controversial.

The financial situation of European clubs

According to the UEFA report (2023), of the major European leagues only the top three leagues (England, Germany and Spain) have generated overall profits on their current operations over the last ten years. In 2022, of the twenty richest clubs, half were generating a profit margin. When player transfers and taxes are taken into account, even though the financial situation (probably due to Financial Fair Play and the growth in TV rights, particularly in the Premier League) has improved since the 2010s (see Figure 1), only 55% of European clubs were profitable in 2019. In 2022, after the Covid crisis, only 45% of teams were profitable.

Over the long term, football clubs were on a break-even trend, generating neither profits nor losses. Since the introduction of Financial Fair Play, the number of European teams with loss-making accounts has fallen with losses of nearly 1.7 billion gradually giving way to positive results overall. This turnaround is mainly due to the increase in revenues in the five biggest leagues. Operating profitsessentially revenues before transfers and taxes-have been positive since 2013. Net effective losses after transfers fell by 81% between 2011 and 2016. In 2017, an exceptional year in terms of total results, of the 55 leagues managed by UEFA, 29 showed positive results against 26 still in deficit, including less than ten with a deficit margin of more than 20% of overall income. In 2011, when the profitability of European football was at its lowest, there were 9 profitable leagues and 44 in deficit, including 16 with a negative margin of more than 20%.

There are obviously differences between countries that are generating profits, England, Germany and Spain in particular, and those that continue to experience difficulties, Italy, Turkey and Greece for example. Looking at the 98 clubs in the Big 5, in 2019, 70 teams (including the 20 in the Premier League) made a surplus on current operations (before player transfers) and 69 clubs made a net profit (including transfers). But the "good performers" are not the same in both cases: while all the richest clubs are usually to be found among those making the highest margins before transfers, other much less wealthy clubs are to be found among Source: UEFA the teams making the highest profits. However, making the highest profit before transfers enables the richest clubs to hire the best players to win titles.

Theory

It is therefore clear that most European football clubs, even the biggest, are not always profitable. Economic analysis then proposes possible alternatives: maximization of the company's sales [START_REF] Baumol | Business Behavior, Value and Growth[END_REF], maximization of its growth [START_REF] Marris | The Economic Theory of "Managerial" Capitalism[END_REF], satisfaction behaviour [START_REF] Simon | Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment[END_REF]) or maximization of a utility [START_REF] Williamson | The Economic Institutions of Capitalism[END_REF]. All these hypotheses imply, to varying degrees, limits to the pure pursuit of profit in football [START_REF] Sloane | The Economics of professional football: The football club as a utility maximiser Scottish[END_REF]).

For football clubs, it seems clear that objectives other than profitability need to be considered. A club could thus " maximize a utility function" whose arguments are a whole set of objectives that may vary from one club to another: the number of victories for glory, stadium attendance for atmosphere, the reputation of players for ratings and popularity, competitive balance for suspense... with a constraint on the rate of profit (which may be zero). There are several approaches to the objective function to be adopted. What they have in common, however, is the victory-profit trade-off [START_REF] Fort | Managerial objectives: a retrospective on utility maximization in pro team sports Scottish[END_REF]. [START_REF] Quirk | The economic theory of a professional sports league[END_REF] propose a (dynamic) model based on a profitvictory trade-off depending on the club's preferences and constrained by the relative quality of the squad. [START_REF] Kesenne | League management in professional team sports with win maximizing clubs[END_REF] postulates that maximizing the club's revenues ultimately amounts to maximizing the utility of its victories, provided that it reaches its break-even point. [START_REF] Rascher | A model of a professional sports league[END_REF] assumes that clubs maximize an additively separable (weighted) utility function between wins and profits. [START_REF] Vrooman | A unified theory of capital and labor markets in major league baseball[END_REF] assumes that the club maximizes a utility function that depends on the value of the membership and its performance. [START_REF] Dietl | Competitive balance and revenue sharing in sports leagues with utility-maximizing teams[END_REF] adopt the same additively separable utility function as [START_REF] Rascher | A model of a professional sports league[END_REF] without relatively weighting the two arguments.

Finally, Madden and Robinson (2012), present the most complete specification: the club's maximization problem retains an additively separable utility function between profits, winning and stadium attendance. Their model writes as follows the objective U i of club i:

U i = λ i,π π i + λ i,v v i + λ i,F F i
where π i is the profit, v i the sport achievement (victories), and F i the satisfaction of the fans. The clubs maximizes this utility under the constraint that the profit is non-negative, by deciding the wages of its players and its ticketing policy, and given the other club's wage. This model has the same structure than the one that we will use in the present paper, and is also solved using Nash equilibrium,1 but we will neglect the F i term and the ticketing policy; an issue that is studied in [START_REF] Arrondel | Economic analysis of the 12th man: should the fans be paid?[END_REF].

Terrien et al (2017) synthesize the theoretical literature by defining three objectives for football clubs: 1) maximizing profit under a sporting constraint of wins; 2) maximizing wins under a 'hard' budget constraint; 3) maximizing wins under a 'soft' budget constraint.

This last notion of a "soft" constraint is inherited from the work of the economist J. [START_REF] Kornaï | Economics of shortage[END_REF] on Soviet economies, which highlighted the fact that companies incorporate into their behaviour the possibility of being bailed out in the event of losses. This logic was proposed for football clubs by [START_REF] Andreff | French football: a financial crisis rooted in weak governance[END_REF], where the "lender of last resort" could be the shareholder, a bank or the local authorities.

Empirics

To empirically settle this debate between the two logics, profit objective vs. victory objective, P. Garcia del Barro and S. Szymanski (2009) analyzed the accounts and rankings of English and Spanish clubs over the period 1994-2004. There are two very strong statistical relationships between a club's income and its sporting performance (in order to increase its income, it must win), and between its performance and its wage bill (in order to win, the team must be the best it can be). As in any competitive environment, these relationships depend on the strategy of the other teams: if the other clubs seek to maximize their profits, the incentive to invest in players diminishes, since the return on investment will then be lower; if the other clubs maximize their wins, all the profits will be used to improve the team's ranking and therefore to sign better-performing players.

Since club profits are mainly determined by the difference between revenues and the wage bill, it is then possible to identify a relationship between the expected level of profit and the position in the league rankings conditional on the choice of all the other teams in the competition. By comparing each club's observed ranking, the one that would enable it to maximize its profit (for a given performance) and the one that would enable it to maximize wins (for zero profit), we can conclude that one or other of the hypotheses tested is correct. The authors show that it is the objective of maximizing victories that best describes the behaviour of the Spanish and English clubs studied: glory is preferred to money.

However, a few years later, Szymanski seems to be going back on this hypothesis, at least for the English case [START_REF] Leach | Making money out of football Scottish[END_REF]. In this new empirical study, he looks at the changes in strategy that the IPO (Initial Public Offering) of many English clubs in the 1990s should have brought about for owners. Indeed, the listing of teams should have led to an increased pursuit of profit. However, the authors find no evidence of any change in the clubs' financial results before and after the flotation of the English teams. In their view, this conclusion would be consistent with the hypothesis that these clubs are ultimately more profit-oriented than is generally accepted.

Leach and Szymanski (2015, pp. 25-26) also note that there are numerous empirical and theoretical studies on the debate between profit maximization and victory maximization, but that this "literature does not offer a clear-cut conclusion and does not clearly establish empirical evidence supporting one hypothesis over another".

To explain this lack of conclusion, Terrien et al. (2017) argue that the three possible objectives already mentioned can coexist within the same league for different clubs, but also for a given club over a given period: teams in the same league would not have the same objectives, and the same team could have different objectives over time. We put forward another possible explanation, based on a paradoxical pattern that emerges when comparing objectives and results at the equilibrium of an oligopoly game.

Illustration of recent changes

The economic context of European football means that some owners anticipate that, in the medium term, top football clubs will be profitable: by making profits, players trading or capital gains on resales. This is probably the gamble and the economic logic of the investment or private equity funds that are interested in football. Figure 2 presents the correlation between the ranking of the Top 20 club revenue and their wage to revenue ratios and Figure 3 presents the correlation between the ranking (the UEFA coefficient) of the Top 20 club revenue and their wage to revenue ratios, on average between 2013 and 2019. 2 Both illustrate the recent transformation of the economics of football: Top clubs are interested in revenue (hence profit) and sporting success.

3 An oligopoly model of a league

Wages and wins

We consider a k-player game, a model of a league of k professional football clubs. The result of the sport competition among these clubs is captured by a variable that we denote v i for club i akin to a probability of victory or a ranking.

This result solely depends on the wages w i payed to the players of team i compared to the wage in the other teams. Let

W = k j=1 w j
denote the total payroll paid by the clubs. We consider the simple model: The victory measure varies between 0 (the team always loses, which happens if w i = 0) and 1 (the team is the only winner). The sports revenue r i depends on the success and we will assume that it is strictly proportional to it. There is therefore a total windfall M such that:

v i = w i W . R² = 0,
r i = Mv i ,
and the profit of club i is:

π i = r i -w i .
The parameter M can be interpreted, for instance, as an amount of TV rights if that is the only source of revenue for clubs in the league, and M is distributed according to a formula3 that follows exactly the sport results v.

Note that the potential for collusion is obvious in such a model: If all clubs cut their wages w i by two, the ranking r is unchanged and all their profits increase.

Mixed objective

We will study what happens if each club is interested in both profit and sporting success itself. Let the objective of club i be a mix of these two objectives:

Ω i = π i + α i v i .
The parameter α i may differ from one club to the other and we will suppose, without loss of generality that the clubs i = 1, 2, ..., k are ordered according to the interest they attach to victory itself, the club i = 1 being the one for which profit is the most important:

0 ≤ α 1 ≤ α 2 ≤ • • • ≤ α k .
Note that the previous remark about the potential for cooperation is still valid: If all clubs cut their wages by two, the ranking is unchanged, all profit increase and the value of the objective Ω i increases for all i. This means that, in the considered setting, collusion (cooperation among clubs) has the potential to drive the wages to zero. But we will study the non-cooperative case where each clubs takes as given the other clubs' behavior.

The only decision to be taken by i is its wage w i , and we shall consider only two constraints. The first one is just w i ≥ 0. The second one is that profit be positive: π i ≥ 0. The second contraint means that the wage does not exceeds the revenue r i and, since r i = Mv i = M w i W , if we use the notation

W -i = W -w i
for the total wage bill of the other clubs, we can state the profitability contraint as an explicit constraint on w i :

π i ≥ 0 ⇐⇒ w i ≤ r i ⇐⇒ w i ≤ M w i w i + W -i ⇐⇒ w i ≤ M -W -i .
This can be written in a simpler but less explicit manner as:

W < M (1)
One can then proceed to the maximization of the club's objective

Ω i for w i ∈ [0, M -W -i ].
Writing Ω i as a function of w i , it comes:

Ω i = Mv i -w i + α i v i dΩ i dw i = (M + α i ) 1 W - w i W 2 -1 = (M + α i ) W -i W 2 -1 d 2 Ω i dw 2 i = (M + α i ) -W -i W 3 < 0.
Since the second derivative is negative, three cases are possible: w i = 0, w i = M -W -i , or an interior solution.

The maximum is at 0 if and only if dΩ i dw i

| w i =0 ≤ 0. But for w i = 0, W -i = W , so that the first necessary condition for an interior maximum is simply:

M + α i ≥ W
and one can see that this condition is redundent with condition [START_REF] Andreff | French football: a financial crisis rooted in weak governance[END_REF].

Hence the maximum is at M -W -i if and only if the derivative dΩ i dw i is positive at that point. We shall later check whether this condition holds or not.

Cournot-Nash equilibrium

For an interior solution the first order condition is:

(M + α i )W -i = W 2
(2) so that the best response function is:

w i = (M + α i )W -i -W -i .
One can then compare what happens, at equilibrium, to the various clubs. For i < j, that is if j places more importance on winning than i, α i < α j and the results are as follows.

• For wages: in view of (2), M + α i < M + α j implies W -i > W -j and therefore:

w i < w j .
• For profits: writing π i = ( M W -1)w i , one immediately gets

π i < π j .
This last result is particularly remarkable since it indicates that, paradoxically, the clubs most interested in profit are those that make the lowest profits.

Examples

We will now give some examples and each time verify that the first order conditions are compatible and do provide an interior equilibrium. These examples highlight the mechanism at work and, although they do not pretend to mimic an existing league, they show that the paradox does not vanish for 20 clubs.

Example with two clubs

Take α 1 = 0 and α 2 > 0. The sytem of first order conditions (see [START_REF] Arrondel | Economic analysis of the 12th man: should the fans be paid?[END_REF]) can be solved analytically:

Mw 2 = (w 1 + w 2 ) 2 (M + α 2 )w 1 = (w 1 + w 2 ) 2
yields, after some computation:

w 1 = (M+α 2 )M 2 (2M+α 2 ) 2 w 2 = (M+α 2 ) 2 M (2M+α 2 ) 2 hence W = M(M + α 2 ) 2M + α 2 .
So the condition W < M is satisfied, hence the above wage values form an interior equilibrium. Now observe that, at equilibrium, Mw 2 = (M +α 2 )w 1 , hence w 2 > w 1 . This means that club 2, which is relatively more interested in victory is paying a higher wage, and is thus winning more often. Profits are:

π i = Mv i -w i = M w i W -w i = M W -1 w i ,
so that the club that is more interested by profit (i = 1) makes the smallest profit.

Examples with more clubs

For more clubs the analytic solution seems out of reach in general but a good software such as Mathématica can compute the exact numerical solution up to k = 5 clubs. To fix ideas and without loss of generality we set M = 100.

If all clubs only care for profit

First note, for a benchmark, that if all parameters α i are nil, the wages are all the same. For k = 5, w i = 16 and the profit of each club is 4. The total payroll is 80 so that, overall in the industry, the wages capture 80% of the manna M.

One club is looking for victory

One club, out of five has a strictly positive value of α. Take for instance: α = {0, 0, 0, 0, 40}

Then the wages decreases compared with the benchmark except for the club aiming directly at victory. One gets w = {12.9, 12.9, 12.9, 12.9, 33.4} and the total payroll increases at W = 84.9.

The profit decreases for the first four clubs and increases for the last one, following the paradoxical pattern mentioned earlier.

π = {2.30, 2.30, 2.30, 2.30, 5.97}.

An example with different objectives

Suppose that all clubs are more or less interested in their ranking. From these computations it seems that variations in the objective (the parameter α) induces important variations among clubs but that the variation of the total payroll is not so large. One is tempted to suppose that, in aggregate, what share of the manna is consumed by the wages is mainly determined by k, the number of competitors. The next example will confirm this intuition.

An example with twenty clubs

Suppose now that there are k = 20 clubs, that replicate four times the previous parameters α. Take M = 400 to compare. With respect to the previous example we just cloned each club into four copies. This has the effect of increasing the wages: w = {15.6, 17.4, 19.2, 21.0, 22.8} and to decrease the profits: π = {0.66, 0.74, 0.81, 0.89, 0.96}.

The total payroll W = 383.8 is now 96% of M.

Conclusion

The above result may be counter-intuitive. Since all clubs are identical except in their objectives, they have the potential to imitate each other, so if one club, say i, places relatively more emphasis on profit than another club, j, which puts more emphasis on sporting success, one might think that they would end up with a situation in which i made more profit and j was more successful. If this were the case, it would be possible to directly deduce behavior and objectives from (sporting and financial) results. But this line of reasoning fails to take into account the oligopolistic nature of the competition between clubs: when one club changes its wage policy, all the others are affected. It follows that the comparison between the results obtained by different clubs at a given equilibrium should must not be confused with the different results a club would obtain, in a fixed environment, if it had other objectives. This paper noted that this distinction can be qualitative: clubs that place less weight on profit in their objective are, at equilibrium, those that are observed to achieve higher profits. Such a result, which has its origins in the complex interactions involved in equilibrium, may be counter-intuitive, and may explain why it is difficult in practice to identify a club's objectives from observations, as the empirical literature has experienced.

These game-theoretic effects are particularly important when the number of players is low, and they tend to disappear in a large market. This is unsurprisingly the case in the examples provided above. In reality, sport leagues are sectors in which the number of actors is relatively small and the atomistic hypothesis of purely competitive markets may be less relevant than an oligopolistic, gametheoretical perspective.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Cumulative net result of Europe's main leagues (millions of Euros). Source: UEFA

Figure 2 :Figure 3 :

 23 Figure 2: Correlation between Top 20 UEFA club revenue and wage to revenue ratios (on average, 2013-2019)

There are only two clubs in the model of Maiden and Robinson.

Because of ex aequos in the number of points between two teams in a given year, we have dropped the two last means in Figure2because there were too few observations.

A sizable body of literature is devoted to the question of choosing the redistribution formulas; see[START_REF] Bergantinios | Broadcasting La Liga[END_REF]. The simple proportional rule is sufficient for our purposes.

thanks the support of the EUR grant ANR-17-EURE-0001


Hélène Gorge
email: helene.gorge@univ-lille.fr

Nil Özçağlar-Toulouse Maud Herbert

Isabelle Robert

What Do We Really Need? Questioning Consumption through Sufficiency

Keywords: Sufficiency, sustainability, dominant social paradigm, frugality, downshifting, needs

This article introduces the concept of sufficiency in the literature on sustainability, by presenting its specific dual nature (voluntary and obliged) and its collective implication.

Sufficiency implies a reorganization of consumption priorities that we introduce by a discussion on consumerism and the dominant social paradigm. Long interviews with sufficient people show the complexity of sufficiency, which creates semantic oppositions around the notion of having (everything vs. nothing and not nothing vs. not everything). After a semiotic analysis of people's interpretation of sufficiency, we propose a reflection about the use of macro-marketing tools to better enhance and enact sufficiency in a collective way.

Introduction

Our economic model in recent years has come to be challenged by the globalization of consumerist lifestyles and their increasing pressure on natural resources. In response, several studies have focused on improving consumption by reducing its negative consequences, such as through reuse, repair, or recycling initiatives [START_REF] Dobscha | Re)Thinking Distribution Strategy: Principles from Sustainability[END_REF][START_REF] Moisander | Narratives of Sustainable Ways of Living: Constructing the Self and the Other as a Green Consumer[END_REF][START_REF] Shaw | Voluntary Simplicity and the Ethics of Consumption[END_REF]. A more radical view recommends consumption limitations, and calls for coercive measures, such as decreasing our overconsumption habits and eventually lowering our living standards [START_REF] Dobson | Environmental Citizenship: Towards Sustainable Development[END_REF][START_REF] Illich | Tools for conviviality[END_REF][START_REF] Jonas | The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age[END_REF]. In this research, we explore these more radical forms of consumption limitation by introducing the concept of sufficiency into the discussion on sustainability.

The concept of sufficiency emerged from activist circles at the beginning of the 2000s. It was particularly influenced by Ivan [START_REF] Illich | Tools for conviviality[END_REF] notion of ''austerity,'' which promotes a style of living that should be both ecologically sustainable and socially enjoyable. Princen (2005, p. 6) defines sufficiency as a downward reassessment of needs, with the ultimate end of reducing consumption of raw materials and energy: ''Today, with the imperative to translate the self-evident limits of a single planet into the limits of everyday life, the organizing principle might be sufficiency. Such a translation is unlikely, arguably impossible, under the logic of a consumer economy where specialization, large-scale operation, and consumer demand prevail.'' For [START_REF] Princen | The Logic of Sufficiency[END_REF], the logic of sufficiency consists of consuming a quantity of goods and services that is just sufficient for optimal well-being, refraining from both under-consumption and overconsumption.

''It is the sense that, as one does more and more of an activity, there can be enough and then there can be too much. I eat because I'm hungry, but at some point I'm satiated. If I keep eating, I become bloated. I go for a walk because it feels good -because I enjoy the movement, the fresh air, and the scenery, but if my physical exertion begins to override my pleasure, I've had enough. If I keep walking to the point where all my attention is on my aching feet and tired legs, I've had too much. I can sense the excess (Princen 2005, p. 43).''

The French environmental association Virage Energie 2 (2013) has taken this logic of sufficiency a step further, compelling diverse actors to modify their consumption practices through sophisticated conceptualizations of sufficiency. Indeed, sufficiency cannot be limited to volunteer ecological behavior. Warnings about the end of abundant and low-cost oil imply an obligation to reduce energy consumption. Here, sufficiency is not a choice, but a situation of adaptation and resilience [START_REF] Hopkins | The Transition Handbook. From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience[END_REF]. Actually, we can enlarge the scope of sufficiency by gathering both voluntary and obligatory consumption limitations. Thus, Virage Energie, based on the Négawatt manifesto (Association Négawatt 2012) defines three types of sufficiency enactment: (1) a dimensional sufficiency in which size is adjusted to meet needs (e.g., avoiding a 400 m 2 house for two persons); (3) a sufficiency of utilization, focused on the level and duration of use (e.g., not taking more food than needed, turning off the lights); and (3) a convivial sufficiency, based on collective urban planning to enhance social links (e.g., bikes instead of cars).

The notion of sufficiency is marked by three major distinctions from mainstream perspectives on sustainability. First, it is different from 3R initiatives (reuse, repair, or recycling; see [START_REF] Dobscha | Re)Thinking Distribution Strategy: Principles from Sustainability[END_REF], as such initiatives do not challenge consumption in itself, but rather encourage solutions that may require fewer material and energy resources.

For example, where 3R initiatives would recommend solutions to build a hybrid, less energyhungry car, sufficiency would directly encourage giving up on using cars altogether. Second, the concept of sufficiency diverges from ''efficiency.'' As technological innovation and industrial progress have made products and services more efficient, the challenge becomes satisfying needs while using less energy. Distinct from 3R initiatives' inclination toward efficiency, sufficiency questions living choices and consumption norms. On this last point, sufficiency diverges from such concepts as voluntary simplicity, frugality, and downshifting as these focus solely on voluntary behaviors maintaining only the essential features of consumption [START_REF] Cherrier | Drifting Away From Excessive Consumption: a New Social Movement Based on Identity Construction[END_REF][START_REF] Elgin | Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich[END_REF]. The doctrine of sufficiency prescribes an act of decreasing energy-demanding consumption that can be voluntary (see, e.g., the ''degrowth movement''), but also obligatory. For example, our economies rely on massive inputs of cheap energy. To survive peak oil, according to advocates of sufficiency, we may be forced to limit our levels of consumption. A further point of departure is that, while the concepts of voluntary simplicity, frugality, and down-shifting hinge more on individual decisions regarding consumption levels, the concept of sufficiency highlights a collective one.

The concept of sufficiency advocates a radical decrease of material and energy-demanding consumption, which contrasts with the traditional forms of progress inculcated by ideas of growth, consumption, and production. Historically, consumption has been a tool to achieve equality and address individual needs [START_REF] Cohen | A consumers' Republic. The politics of mass consumption in postwar America[END_REF], including psychological needs such as self-esteem and self-fulfillment. Yet consumer culture might also be criticized for its focus on materialistic values [START_REF] Baudrillard | La Genèse Idéologique des Besoins[END_REF][START_REF] Bauman | Consuming Life[END_REF][START_REF] Ritzer | Enchanting a disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the means of consumption[END_REF]. Materialism and the accumulation of material possessions might not create well-being [START_REF] Ahuvia | Materialism: Origins and Implications for Personal Well-Being[END_REF][START_REF] Kasser | The High Price of Materialism[END_REF], whether due to the alienation created by mass production and consumption [START_REF] Debord | La Société du Spectacle[END_REF] or the necessary (though difficult) distinction between false (superficial/artificial) and true (objective/real) needs [START_REF] Adorno | Par-Delà le Vrai et le Faux. Deux Textes sur la Théorie des Besoins[END_REF]. At the very least, consumer research has confirmed that materialism and well-being are far from synonymous [START_REF] Burroughs | Materialism and Well-Being: A Conflicting Values Perspective[END_REF].

The sufficiency movement (obligatory or voluntary) instead suggests wholesale defection from what might be called ''mainstream'' living conditions and patterns of consumption. This impacts a vast range of consumption choices because it forces individual consumers to reassess their own needs. How do consumers negotiate this reassessment and interpret the logic of sufficiency? Can we find similar issues among voluntarily and obligatorily sufficient people? And how can sufficiency be informed and actualized at both individual and collective levels?

Sufficiency generally creates a confrontation between its logic of reduction and the ongoing consumption that has increasingly crystallized in our consumer culture [START_REF] Princen | The Logic of Sufficiency[END_REF]. In this context, we examine how consumers tend to experience sufficiency, and how it refines their consumption standards and practices. We begin by reviewing the dominant interpretation of needs in social paradigms, and its confusion with the idea of desires. We then present our methodology, which is based on thirteen long interviews: we study the meanings of sufficiency for people whose engagement in the process is voluntary and those for whom it is obligatory.

Our study revealed a fundamental binary opposition, which led us to use semiotic square analysis that we use in both its static and syntexic methods. The semiotic square shows how obligatorily and voluntarily sufficient people find balance between the two poles of ''not (having) everything'' and ''not (having) nothing.'' We thus clarify how the notion of needs is negotiated when engaged in sufficiency, shedding light on innovative and collective ways of thinking about and living out this consumption paradigm.

Negotiating Sufficiency in the Dominant Social Paradigm

Needs, individual attitudes, and beliefs all are conditioned by what Pirages and Ehrlich (1974, p. 43) call the ''dominant social paradigm'' (DSP), which they define as ''the collection of norms, beliefs, values, habits, and so on that form the world view most commonly held within a culture.'' To understand its different facets, studies address the DSP of Western industrial societies according to economic, political, and social dimensions [START_REF] Dunlap | Commitment to The Dominant Social Paradigm and Concern for Environmental Quality[END_REF]Kilbourne et al. 2001;[START_REF] Kilbourne | The Role of the Dominant Social Paradigm in Environmental Attitudes: A Multinational Examination[END_REF][START_REF] Kilbourne | Sustainable Consumption and the Quality of Life: A Macromarketing Challenge to the Dominant Social Paradigm[END_REF], showing their incompatibility with the notion of ecological durability [START_REF] Cotgrove | Catastrophe or Cornucopia: The Environment, Politics and the Future[END_REF]. For example, [START_REF] Kilbourne | Sustainable Consumption and the Quality of Life: A Macromarketing Challenge to the Dominant Social Paradigm[END_REF] propose a conceptual framework shaped by the combination of economic, educational, and religious policy, dominated by methodological individualism, material abundance, and continuous economic growth and faith in technological progress. The belief in technological progress and unlimited consumption also initiates a cycle of self-justification, and whose objective is the domination of nature. It leads to an anthropocentric project and demystification of nature in the DSP [START_REF] Kilbourne | Green Marketing: a Theoretical Perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Kilbourne | Incorporating the Dominant Social Paradigm into Government Technology Transfer Programs[END_REF].

The DSP is reinforced by the consumer culture, which emphasizes a complex rhetoric about needs and desires. This rhetoric makes environmental choices more difficult because they stand in opposition to a mainstream rhetoric of excess and consumerism. In periods of economic scarcity, needs are ''natural'' and pertain to ''survival (biological and social), and once that purpose [is] met (the needs have been satisfied), there [is] no point in consuming more'' (Wilk 2002, p. 12). Economic scarcity thus creates a state of conflict between needs and avail-able resources. It results in a redefinition of well-being as finding an internal balance [START_REF] Mardellat | Théorie de la Consommation et Pensée Pratique Chez Carl Menger[END_REF], though this balance varies by social, economic, and cultural environment. In the pre-industrial era, for example, low production and consumption levels resulted in a narrow focus on fulfilling basic needs. Human needs also constitute a material cause of economic activity [START_REF] Mardellat | Théorie de la Consommation et Pensée Pratique Chez Carl Menger[END_REF], which has accelerated with industrialization and with growing, diversified access to consumer goods [START_REF] Beck | Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity[END_REF]). Modernity has aimed for progress in social well-being, as reflected in the importance placed on the production process, which seeks to expand the availability of goods to the mass market. At this point in history, needs became associated with the notion of production (Fullerton 1998), though cultural elements also have influenced perceptions of needs, shifting them toward the notion of desires.

In the postmodern era, ''consumers would no longer be need-driven but have driven needs'' (Firat and Venkatesh 1995, p. 48). Desires are not structured, and consumers confuse the notions of wish, desire, want, and need. Thus conflicts arise in consumption activities, such as shopping, between the ''eco-nomic instrumental activity of satisfying needs'' and ''desireoriented practice'' (Keller 2005, p. 4). Moreover, consumers refer to a need to legitimize their decisions or display their rationality [START_REF] Keller | Needs, Desires and the Experience of Scarcity. Representations of Recreational Shopping in Post-Soviet Estonia[END_REF][START_REF] Schor | The Overspent American. Why We Want What We Don't Need[END_REF]). This rationalization remains in effect as long as needs remain subject to the notion of control [START_REF] Schor | The Overspent American. Why We Want What We Don't Need[END_REF]. For Wilk (2002, p. 10), ''the transformation of desires into needs takes place through the interaction between individual choices and social rules.'' Mass consumption in turn has prompted marketers to perpetuate this confusion of needs and desires [START_REF] Belk | The fire of desire: a multisited inquiry into consumer passion[END_REF], creating an endless cycle [START_REF] Baudrillard | La Genèse Idéologique des Besoins[END_REF]) that boosts the ''consuming desire of consuming'' (Bauman 2001, p. 13). Consumers may ''need'' things not for what they are, but for the satisfaction of having bought them, showing off the capacity to afford them, or enjoying the acquisition process per se. The desire to acquire may end in an irrepressible quest, sometimes stronger and more intense than the gratification of possessing itself. Advertising, promotions, continuous desires, and renewal through the use of credit and planned obsolescence [START_REF] Latouche | Bons Pour la Casse ! Les Déraisons de l'Obsolescence Programmée[END_REF]) stimulate the ''thirst for consumption'' and economic growth. Moreover, the imagery promoted by the notion of progress, as it is widely conceived among members of civil society, embraces a notion of a continually increasing consumption, symbolized by a materialist approach [START_REF] Kilbourne | Sustainable Communication and the Dominant Social Paradigm: Can They Be Integrated?[END_REF]). However, environmental and economic crises call for a way back to ''real'' needs [START_REF] Dolan | The Sustainability of "Sustainable Consumption[END_REF] as a view on consumption. Different kinds of actors and influences-as depicted by the story of needs in the DSP frame or consumer culturemake this initiative much harder. The lack of a supportive macro dynamic often implies complex subjective justifications of ''needs,'' as in the case of people living under sufficiency.

The purpose of our investigation on how consumers explain and live their sufficiency is to overcome the traditional and somehow Manichean dichotomy of need vs. (un)need (superfluous) to build a macro dynamic based on their perspective.

Methodology

This article is part of an action-research project on sufficiency (Sobriétés 2013), initiated in 2010, to identify the potential and challenges offered by regional practices of sufficiency in France. The action-research perspective is particularly relevant for identifying micro issues and extrapolating them into macro challenges [START_REF] Gustavsen | Action Research, Practical Challenges and the Formation of Theory[END_REF][START_REF] Ozanne | Community Action Research[END_REF]. In this spirit, we have worked with six territorial stakeholders chosen for their involvement in sufficiency, three of which focus on obligatory sufficiency, while the others have adopted voluntary sufficiency approaches. These organizations help individuals to adopt new lifestyles characterized by sufficiency.

Unlike research focused on efficiency and energy renew-ability, sufficiency may contradict the DSP, as it requires a reevaluation of individual needs and deep changes to everyday behavior. What can individual choices of consumption teach us about sufficiency? To deepen the link between sufficiency and consumption, we began by conducting long interviews [START_REF] Mccracken | Culture and Consumption. New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities[END_REF] with members and representatives of these organizations. Our yearlong immersions in each organization facilitated close observations of their functioning, as well as interactions with various representatives. Thanks to these immersions, we expanded recruitment of informants to 12 people through use of the snowball sampling [START_REF] Goodman | Snowball Sampling[END_REF]. Taking the situation of obligatory sufficient consumers into account may be explained in two ways. First, disadvantaged consumers most acutely experience the environmental and energy crisis [START_REF] Ingram | Integrating Ecology and Poverty Reduction[END_REF], compelling us to learn more about their understanding of sufficiency. Second, taking account of restriction of consumption caused by acute constraints (e.g., peak oil) is still a challenge. Nevertheless, including obligatory consumers in our study allows for exploring these constrained living experiences, and thus both dimensions of sufficiency: voluntary and obligatory.

We summarize some basic information about these consumers in Table 1, including their various pathways to sufficiency. The interviews were all carried out at the homes of the interviewees, recorded, and then transcribed. In a non-linear fashion, they focused on how these people understand the concept of sufficiency and how their consumption behaviors are modulated by its implementation. become both a way of having "not nothing" as dealing with scarcity, and having "not everything" as enjoying to be sufficient.

While reading the interviews, we found a semantic opposition between two basic notions (i.e., the term ''nothing'' and the term ''everything''). This binary dimension encouraged us to use a linguistic analysis called the semiotic square [START_REF] Greimas | Du Sens, Essais Sémiotiques[END_REF], which provided a framework for understanding and explaining the meanings of our interviewees' dis-courses about sufficiency. The semiotic square is an analytical tool used in structural linguistics. It is based on the Paris school of semiotic theory promoted by [START_REF] Greimas | Du Sens, Essais Sémiotiques[END_REF]Courte`s (1991), who extended the early work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1916). The aim of the semiotic square is to reveal the meaning of a discourse based on an initial opposition scheme found in its rhetoric, which is represented as A versus B (for example bad versus good). To use the semiotic square, this initial scheme must be extended on the diagonals. The diagonal represents the contradiction scheme, wherein the contradiction of A is ''not A'' (for example bad and not bad), and the contradiction of B is ''not B'' (good and not good). Then, the square reveals meanings through the vertical schemes, known as the complementary scheme: not A is close to B (for example not bad means nearly good) and not B is close to A (not good could be bad).

In our data the initial opposition scheme is everything opposed to nothing. This binary opposition is found in the respondents' discourses because they use those words frequently enough to consider that their argumentation is based on this core opposition [START_REF] Greimas | Du Sens, Essais Sémiotiques[END_REF].

Even if they use them with diverse meanings, the theory of the semiotic square assumes to first decontextualize those words and consider the ''Everything / Nothing'' as a pure structural binary scheme (Courte`s 1991) and second to lean on this scheme to construct a semiotic square in which the first contradiction term is not everything, and the second contradiction term is not nothing (see Figure 1). This semiotic square supports two new complementary meanings: not everything is close to nothing and not nothing could mean everything. The semiotic square should be interpreted as a homogeneous universe [START_REF] Floch | Petites Mythologies de l'OEil et de l'Esprit[END_REF][START_REF] Floch | Sémiotique, Marketing et Communication: Sous les Signes, les Stratégies[END_REF]. Each term of the square has a meaning related to the others, and all of them intermingle. In our square, the four terms are meaningful and symbolize specific common speech; thus when people say ''it is not like I have nothing'' they assume that they have a lot (nearly everything). Starting with this semiotic square, we went back to the dis-courses to recontextualize and analyze the interviews in order to enrich the meanings of each term of the square. We pursued a semantic analysis of the discourses of our informants (occurrences of the words nothing and everything, and semantic similarities) and an interpretive analysis of the quotes based on the semantic analysis. This mixed method gives a deeper under-standing of the four terms of the square. By doing so, we use the first reading level of this linguistic tool, in what [START_REF] Greimas | Du Sens, Essais Sémiotiques[END_REF] refers to as a static use of the semiotic square.

Static Analysis of Semiotic Square: A Better Understanding of Sufficiency

Through the Four Terms

The static analysis of the square goes deeper into the meaning of each term by analyzing how informants use those terms in their own discourses.

The Meaning of Everything

In our data, everything appears closely linked to the idea of ''too much'' and ''too many.'' Jean said: ''There is too much of everything,'' while Laurine explained: ''There is too much choice, too many things, you don't know what to buy any-more.'' Thus, everything means the plenty of consumption, a representation of abundance. But the informants (both obligatory and voluntary) almost always refer to the negative side of this plenty, such as excess and overwhelming choices: ''I was throwing away many things because I was buying too much'' (Géraldine). Many informants express the idea that everything leads to waste: ''There are too many things, too much waste, plenty of things to throw away, too much to choose... I wonder what I am going to take among all of these'' (Bernadette).

The Meaning of Nothing

Opposed to everything, the meaning of nothing refers in some way to scarcity and is logically more commonly invoked (and experienced) by obligatorily sufficient consumers. For example, Bernadette left her former home ''with nothing except the car, a table and four chairs.''

Nothing is also linked to the word ''never'': ''Excepting holidays, I do nothing, I never go to the cinema, I never buy any clothes'' (Géraldine). Voluntarily informants also refer to nothing, but not as a romantic vision of asceticism. Instead, it represents an old-fashioned, uncomfortable way of life as expressed by Françoise: ''My mother for example used to be a farmer; she buys nothing, she grows her own vegetables, she does poultry farming, she lives in an old house, does nothing in it, no comfort at all, and she lives at risk.'' This point of view helps distinguish sufficiency from asceticism or chosen frugality. Clearly, in our data, ''nothing'' is not considered to be a comfortable situation or lifestyle.

We should note that both the ''everything'' term and the ''nothing'' term represent unpleasant positions for our informants. For sufficiency practitioners, there seems to be no balance in this fundamental opposition. Yet, the meanings of the other terms help in understanding why those terms are rejected.

The Meaning of Not Nothing

This third term of the square refers to the idea of a restrained consumption but without making too many sacrifices. Semantically, not nothing could be everything but is not. There are two distinct features, however. First, it refers to the idea that people cannot lessen all consumption patterns at once. For example, some informants explain that they decided to go on vacation (spend money, take plane trips) because it seemed they could not jeopardize this aspect of life. As Géraldine explains: ''we cannot deprive the children of vacations, it is important for keeping the family together.'' This is why we may refer to her as expressing ''not nothing'' concerning holiday expenses (i.e., she tries to keep holidays as they were before, in the everything sphere), but a ''nothing'' concerning other expenses that she eliminates to preserve those vacations. Similar backwards and forwards consumption movements characterize transportation modes (e.g., car ownership). Informants note that they could not get rid of their car, but did modify their use of it. Thus, they keep the car but increase their use of public transportation for ecological and economic reasons. This kind of phenomenon shows that ''not nothing'' implies constant negotiation of consumption habits by both kinds of informants. Obligatory consumers feel frustrated that they do not have everything and simply cope with it (as Géraldine does), while voluntary consumers struggle to eliminate their overconsumption habits.

Thus, even if the obligatory consumer can be trapped in the ''not nothing'' position, the ''not nothing'' term can also be interpreted as a transitory state preceding wiser consumption. As

Raphaël says: ''I struggle to improve my consumption,'' and as Laurine explains: ''it is just that sometimes I realize that I'm still buying useless stuff!'' Both intend to move on to another stage.

The Meaning of Not Everything

Opposed to ''not nothing'' in the square, ''not everything'' rep-resents the achievement of the sufficiency process. This fourth term of the square refers to a genuine ''less,'' in that it semantically implies almost nothing. In some way, it can be connected to the notion of voluntary simplicity. In the static analysis, informants express the idea that they have arrived at a position in which they quantitatively buy less or live without products, like Bernadette:

''I'm really buying less, nearly nothing.'' The meaning of ''not everything'' thus relates more to a global downward reassessment of consumption habits. Obligatory consumers consider it to be an economic shift toward sufficiency, such as switching to public transportation, buying smaller food portions, reducing electric bills, and finding new heating sources. Nevertheless, they do not (seem to) express frustration when they evoke this position.

For voluntarily sufficient consumers, the changes are more philosophically rooted and, in a way, ''not everything'' represents an ideal for them. Some respondents mention that they choose to get rid of material objects. Again the car is a symptomatic object here that sheds light on the opposition between ''not nothing'' and ''not everything.'' In the ''not everything'' position, informants do not have a car anymore (opposed to the ''not nothing'' position,

where they keep the car and modify only the use of it). Data reveal that they have made their decision and are engaged in a disposal process, such as when Raphaël asserts: ''life is much more weightless without a car.''

The static analysis of ''not everything'' also reveals that for voluntarily consumers fully engaged in sufficiency, ending in that position requires effort and compromises, especially to avoid being perceived as someone on the fringe of society. When they break away from past consumption habits, and thus depart from a more globally dominant eco-nomic model, voluntarily sufficient people become increasingly stigmatized as marginal or extremist by their relatives. According to Françoise:

''People see us as a little extreme, whereas we are far from being extremists; we have some friends who are even more involved into ecological actions . . . they don't really understand our way of consuming, and we no longer really understand theirs, but that's all. You can't go on exhausting yourself fighting all the time, because we really are not in the mainstream.''

This idea of stigmatization helps to understand how vital the idea of community is in the process of achieving sufficiency, not only in its definition as a collective goal but also in its implementation and practice. Groups, associations, forums, and social gatherings may prevent ostracism and stave off loneliness or discouragement.

For a better understanding of how individuals might gather and share experiences and moral support, we propose to use the semiotic square as a map that reveals the different ways of achieving downward reassessment of consumption patterns. To explain these sufficiency paths, we propose a dynamic level of analysis of the semiotic square known as the ''syntaxic use'' [START_REF] Greimas | Du Sens, Essais Sémiotiques[END_REF].

Syntaxic Use of the Square: Two Journeys through Sufficiency and a Common Pathway

The syntaxic use of the semiotic square accounts for successions of positions of the same or several objects in the square, granting meaning to these movements as a dynamic path. We identified two paths, which we called ''journey through sufficiency,'' among obligatorily sufficient people on one hand and voluntarily sufficient people on the other hand. The aim of describing both journeys and thereby distinguishing the type of informants is to determine whether there is any space for a mutual pathway where collective movement could come to support individuals' trajectories.

Journey 1: Obligatorily Sufficient People

Figure 2 shows the different steps (everything/nothing/not nothing/ not everything) that people who experience obligatory sufficiency can follow. Most informants stay in the ''not nothing'' position, having a hard time enduring their sufficiency. However, some move toward the ''not everything'' position, trying to rationalize their situation and find positive aspects in this sufficiency. This movement can be related to emotional coping [START_REF] Hamilton | I Can Do It!" Consumer Coping and Poverty[END_REF], including tactics such as positive perceptions of their situation:

''I have less and less desire for consuming things, finally it's not so bad. I tell myself, 'no, come on!' and I am getting proud of my new philosophical approach. Now I just tell myself, 'you could envy, but don't . . . because I know that if I give up, it will capture me and give me a hard feeling of frustration'' (Bernadette).

Journey 2: Voluntarily Sufficient People

Among voluntary people, sufficiency also appears as a non-linear progressive path, constructed through different steps that we identify using the semiotic square (see Figure 3).

Here informants had everything, but have progressively become more conscious of their consumption patterns, cutting back and reassessing their needs. Generally, they start this process with initiatives that are related to a ''better consumption,'' such as consuming organic and/or local food, and rejecting shopping in big supermarkets. In doing so, they progressively shift to a ''consuming less'' lifestyle that fits with the definition of sufficiency (ecological footprint concerns, control of waste, less food storage, decrease of purchases). As Jean explains:

''It's an ongoing approach. We've been buying organic food for twenty years now, but there are things we came to more recently. Six years ago, we decided for example to only use a bike for our 'home-work' trips. We try to hold on to that. It's a progressive initiative; we try to reduce our ecological footprint, globally reduce our carbon use, and also reduce any useless consumption.'' Thus, they slowly move from the ''not nothing'' position as a first step of adaptation to the ''not everything'' position, which represents an ideal: a balance between consumption-dominant standards and their new life values. For Jean, ''not everything'' constitutes a step toward a more global change in society: ''The ideal would be managing to restrict our consumption level in order for everyone to live decently.'' In the case of voluntary consumers, the idea of sufficiency can be well exemplified and symbolized by concrete experiences. For example, Raphael explains his idea of ''not everything'' as a box that contains important objects for him to use but which he needs to be able ''I have a 'memories box' in which there are things sometimes like 20 or 30 years old, but it's a shoebox, and I try to limit to this box. When there is something that I am really attached to and that I want to keep, I put it into the box and if it doesn't fit, I have to remove something.

EVERYTHING NOT NOTHING NOT EVERYTHING

If there are things I don't use, I put them in the box and I put a date on it. If I don't use it within a year, I don't have the right to use it anymore and it goes to the stuff I give away'' (Raphaël).

A box that will not supersize is an interesting metaphor for the reassessment of needs as well as the trade-offs and discipline that sufficiency entails.

Discussion

Our data show that the dominant social paradigm and consumerist values remain highly influential in people's paths to sufficiency. However, they experience it in manners that suggest ways to exit this paradigm, first by refining the very concept of needs, and then by sustaining sufficiency on a more collective level. In the following discussion, we articulate individual and collective trajectories together in order to clarify the concept of sufficiency.

Acknowledging Individual Sufficiency through Needs

At the very heart of sufficiency stands the idea that individuals can reassess their needs, in that ''sufficiency as an idea is straightforward, indeed simple and intuitive, arguably 'rational.' It is the sense that, as one does more and more of an activity, there can be enough and there can be too much'' (Princen 2005, p. 6). Thus sufficiency as a principle cannot entail sacrifice [START_REF] Princen | The Logic of Sufficiency[END_REF]. Instead, it reaches the point of well-being by finding a balance between excess and emptiness, or as exemplified by the semiotic square, between ''every-thing'' and ''nothing.'' For [START_REF] Semal | Rationnement Volontaire Contre "Abondance Dévastatrice": l'Exemple des CRAGS[END_REF], sufficiency can even be considered as a source of autonomy, because it implies knowledge of both the limits of the planet's resources and people's own consumption limits. Sufficiency nevertheless remains a poorly constructed concept. On one hand, it is marked by great subjectivity, as exemplified by the diverse perceptions of needs, which makes it a relative and individualized concept. On the other hand, sufficiency is difficult to define, as our data show the sufficient individual as much more engaged in a process (the journey) than in a static position.

Through the use of the semiotic square, we have highlighted different sufficiency paths.

Obligatory sufficiency requires people to focus more on what they really need, in the sense that they make consumption choices to balance their budgets. These choices imply a movement toward ''not nothing,'' dealing with material scarcity. Reflection on sufficiency is thus based on ways of avoiding surpassing one's budget, which can be associated with coping strategies [START_REF] Hamilton | I Can Do It!" Consumer Coping and Poverty[END_REF]. In the case of voluntary sufficiency, we notice a deeper reflection on choices connected to ideological values, as well as decisions made to reduce consumption. Thus, these consumers focus more on what they really do not need, as an outcome of their ideological struggle between ideals of consumption and ideals of sufficiency. In contrast, obligatorily sufficient people focus on their individual survival. This difference of perception has been informed by [START_REF] Schor | The Overspent American. Why We Want What We Don't Need[END_REF] explanation that voluntarily frugal people experience their situation much more positively, because they know they can still afford goods if needed. [START_REF] Schor | The Overspent American. Why We Want What We Don't Need[END_REF] mostly observes downgrades by people who happily embrace their new living style. However, and especially in times of economic crisis, sufficiency can also be experienced by people who do not choose it, but are nevertheless forced to adapt.

Plus, constraints such as the peak oil crisis may one day put everyone in a situation of sufficiency whether they choose it or not. If even the voluntarily sufficient people come to experience higher levels of constraint, would they perceive sufficiency in the same way as they do in [START_REF] Schor | The Overspent American. Why We Want What We Don't Need[END_REF] and our own research records? This is one of the reasons sufficiency requires examination by way of these two perspectives, as it reveals differences that may be addressed at a macro level.

Despite their contrasts, obligatorily and voluntarily sufficient people meet at one level, exemplified by the meta-term C in the semiotic square (cf. not nothing-not everything).

According to the semiotic of [START_REF] Greimas | Du Sens, Essais Sémiotiques[END_REF], the relations that constitute the square give meaning to certain positions (i.e., meta-term in Figure 1), even when there is no pre-existing expression. The meta-term represents a neutral term. In this position, informants refer both to not nothing and to not every-thing in the same context, revealing a balance that fits with the ideal purpose of sufficiency [START_REF] Princen | The Logic of Sufficiency[END_REF]. The meta-term C reveals a connection between not nothing and not everything, whereby they might be considered as opposed poles. Instead, they should be viewed as a continuum, in which having ''not everything'' is a process of detachment from everything, starting with a position of having ''not nothing.'' In this way, the experiences of sufficiency taking place at the level of the meta-term C could provide the best insights for public policy aimed at designing ways of enacting sufficiency.

Enacting Collective Sufficiency

From the action research perspective [START_REF] Ozanne | Community Action Research[END_REF], our study highlights institutionalization prospects for sufficiency policies. The previously mentioned modern changes in and threats to our economic system influence people's visions of consumption and needs. In this way, sufficiency covers both individual and collective perspectives, such that it ''is also a commonsense idea at the collective level when risks are readily perceived and serious.... The idea of sufficiency begins to shift to the principle of sufficiency when structure is needed for enactment, when more than sensory perception of 'enoughness' or 'too muchness' is needed to recognize excess and to act'' (Princen 2005, p. 6).

Most informants explain the difficulty of embracing a path to sufficiency because of the feelings of isolation it implies. The tension between consumption norms and sufficiency-best exemplified by having ''not nothing''-involves contradictions between a marginal and a mainstream consumption lifestyle. People engaged in sufficiency justify these contradictions in different ways. For voluntarily sufficient consumers, marginalization is experienced in relation to peers, colleagues, or family members who do not understand their choices. For obligatory ones, isolation is expressed when they feel frustrated with a restriction that does not provide a real living choice. To compensate for these difficulties, sufficiency must evolve from an individual undertaking to a collective movement (Association Virage Energie 2013). This would help the voluntarily sufficient people to overcome the exclusion created by the rupture with mainstream consumption, and the obligatorily sufficient people to secure some dignity and visibility. For example, the organizations that our interviewees are connected with constitute platforms for exchanges on best practices. However, to better implement sufficiency, they would have to create real accompanying measures for their participants, such as the example of carbon rationing action groups (CRAGs). CRAGs envision downgrading through accurate collective measures: ''A CRAG is a group of around a dozen individuals who meet on a regular basis to calculate their GHG emissions together, set reduction goals and exchange tips on how to reach them. Symbolic financial penalties are sometimes meted out if members exceed set targets'' (Cherrier, Szuba, and Özçağlar -Toulouse 2012, p. 402). In the same way, macro structures have to inspire and create forms of sufficiency. The increasing number of local networks based on solidarity and social interaction are some examples to follow. Community gardens, local exchange trading systems (LETS; see [START_REF] Williams | The new barter economy: an appraisal of Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS)[END_REF], and the transition towns movement [START_REF] Hopkins | The Transition Handbook. From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience[END_REF] demonstrate the necessity of collective spaces and actions in guaranteeing well-being for sufficient people. In our data, informants are coming from organizations that are focused on reflecting on sufficiency, missing the practical step that would help them to deal with marginalization.

Sufficiency Versus the Dominant Social Paradigm

Through its values and the behaviors it requires, sufficiency deeply contradicts the dominant social paradigm in industrialized societies. While the DSP focuses on an individual logic of ''always more,'' the enactment of sufficiency requires collective dynamics based on ''having less.'' These main tensions-collectivity vs. atomization of the individual and downgrading vs. material prodigality-generate paradigmatic conflicts between groups of people that do not share the same values and beliefs, and create personal tensions for the sufficient individual as well. As [START_REF] Dunlap | Commitment to The Dominant Social Paradigm and Concern for Environmental Quality[END_REF] show about the relations between the DSP and sustainability, sufficient consumers have conflicting cognitions, sustained by macro discourses on economic growth and consumption. Informants interpret these contradictions, most commonly declaring that their lack of consumption is an obstacle to economic growth. This economic and political ideology concerning growth and abundance is anchored in marketing practices. As Shankar, Whittaker, and Fitchett (2006, p. 4) contend:

''with the dominance of neo-classical economic discourse through its acceptance and implementation across the political spectrum, progress and improvement in the quality of peoples' lives has become conflated to the acquisition of material wealth. Moreover a growing economy is considered a successful economy and we demonstrate how marketing practices have been instrumental in this regard.'' Even international institutions (such as UNO) are now promoting sustainable consumption, but they still are advocating more efficient schemes of consumption rather than consuming less (Ourahmoune et al., 2014). However, new research on sustain-ability [START_REF] Martin | Sustainable Marketing[END_REF]) advances an emancipation of marketing from this DSP model, and intends to reconcile human needs and environmental protection.

In order to further this process and contribute to the emergence of a social paradigm favoring sufficiency, macromarketing techniques could aim to ''decolonize people's imaginary'' [START_REF] Latouche | Décoloniser l'Imaginaire[END_REF] from the dominant economic ideology. How-ever, this contribution requires redefining marketing under the logic of ''being rather than having'' [START_REF] Shankar | Having Being and Consumption[END_REF]. If marketing were to focus on ''sufficient needs'' eco-nomic development [START_REF] Illich | La perte des sens[END_REF], it could facilitate and ease sufficiency by supporting its motor element (i.e., the collective) and its corollary (i.e., participative democracy). Social bonds [START_REF] Godbout | The World of Gift[END_REF] and the ''collective'' are inseparable from sufficiency. Contrary to the political principles embodied by the DSP [START_REF] Kilbourne | Sustainable Communication and the Dominant Social Paradigm: Can They Be Integrated?[END_REF], developing sufficiency could rehabilitate democratic principles, such as favoring participative, deliberative democracy, but also promoting ''communicative action'' [START_REF] Habermas | The Theory of Communicative Action[END_REF]. Communicative action is defined as a situation of interaction between free individuals, based on the search for an understanding on a practical action, and the will to enact projects and actions. Inter-association cooperation (such as between obligatorily and voluntarily sufficiency organizations) is therefore a key element of this process, allowing the obligatorily sufficient people for example to obtain a form of citizen recognition. From this balance between goods and relations and between material and immaterial well-being, associations may generate a feeling of belonging to a community sharing sufficiency values.

Which Marketing Tools to Accompany the Journey Through Sufficiency?

The collective dimension of sufficiency can be understood as the search for relationships rather than goods [START_REF] Godbout | The World of Gift[END_REF]). Yet material sufficiency, and consequently individual downshifting, requires innovative pedagogical processes that facilitate the adoption of new behaviors (Kilbourne andCarlson 2008, Schaefer and[START_REF] Schaefer | Addressing Sustainability and Consumption[END_REF]. Sufficiency is a nonlinear journey. For example, the voluntarily sufficient must move toward ''consuming better'' (i.e., not nothing) before consuming less (i.e., not everything). This implies a step-bystep management. Initially, we might con-sider pedagogical tools focusing on a macro environmental education, such as the ecological footprint, to move from ''everything'' to ''not nothing.'' Later, moving from ''not nothing'' to ''not everything'' could best be managed ''it involved handing out 'ration' books containing one month's 'equitable carbon ration', in the form of coupons for watching tele-vision, having a shower, buying food and clothes, and using various forms of transport. The project aimed to show participants their 'fair share of the world's resources''' (Bramall 2013, p. 26).

The New Economics Foundation has described this as a perfect narrative tool to catch the attention of citizens. Not only does it elicit awareness of energy constraints in their daily lives, but also creates the feeling of living in a society where scarcity is a reality. Other tools inspired from individual creative management, such as Raphael's ''shoebox'' in our data, could be translated to a larger scale.

From being focused on economic and consumption growth, the social paradigm could best evolve to a more sufficient one by offering platforms that support new collective imaginaries. This mutation is only possible through innovative macromarketing tools focusing on a collective knowledge of practices of sufficiency.

Conclusion

Considering the newness of the sufficiency concept, this article gives insights on how people are engaged in and experience sufficiency practices. At one point, sufficiency and marginalization seem to align, for both obligatorily and voluntarily sufficient people. The link between the feeling of emotional solitude and obsessive or addictive behaviors is well established [START_REF] Cherrier | Anti-consumption discourses and consumer-resistant identities[END_REF][START_REF] Elgin | Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich[END_REF]), but the discourses of sufficient consumers suggest another form of solitude, namely isolation, induced by other consumers who embrace sufficiency (such as in the case of Françoise), combined with exclusion from the consumer sphere (such as in the case of Géraldine). A more in-depth analysis of the feelings of solitude or marginalization felt by obligatorily or voluntarily sufficient people, in conjunction with a consideration of the emotional solitude stemming from obsessive consumption [START_REF] Cherrier | Barriers to downward carbon emission: Exploring sustainable consumption in the face of the glass floor[END_REF], would help to clarify the main stages of the process that leads to sufficiency, and to identify the hurdles to living fully up to ideals of sufficiency. Thus, it would be interesting to complement our research with other methodological tools such as direct and indirect observation. Within the framework of this action research, observations across both private and public spheres would have enabled us to delve more deeply into the meaning granted to the act of consumption [START_REF] Holt | How Consumers Consume: A Typology of Consumption Practices[END_REF][START_REF] Kozinets | The Field Behind the Screen: Using Netnography for Marketing Research in Online Communities[END_REF] and specifically to sufficiency practices in concrete terms. Within the framework of action research, a direct or indirect analysis of the composition of household waste (e.g., photos) created by consumersin line with the archeological methods applied to waste disposal by [START_REF] Rathje | Rubbish! The archaeology of Garbage[END_REF], the originators of garbology, and by [START_REF] Gouhier | Rudologie, science de la poubelle, cahier du GEDEG[END_REF], the founder of rudology (systematic study of waste, derives from the latin word rudus -ruins-) would have enabled us to enrich the informants' discourses about their sufficiency practices, to create distance from their sometimes rational discourses, and to fine-tune our study of the tensions between needs and desires.

Our interviewers also explain that being a group is an important matter. Questions remain regarding the connections between sufficiency and the group. It would be interesting to understand if sufficiency is the process leading to seek collective links, or if it is the social exclusion, and therefore the need for support from social solidarity networks, that drive individuals to participate in sufficiency practices. Finally, results show that there is a path where obligatory and voluntary consumers can meet and share their experiences. Our interviews highlight that people can learn to do with less, especially when they work together, such that they seek social links through sharing and new forms of collaborative consumption [START_REF] Albinsson | Alternative marketplaces in the 21st century: Building community through sharing events[END_REF], which manifest a form of resistance to mainstream consumption. Thus, one could investigate the types of cohabitations made possible between obligatory and voluntary sufficient people. It could lead to avenues which explore the potential spaces and times for consumers to share experiences and competences, and to understand how they experience these new types of solidarity networks.

Funding

The author(s) declared receipt of the following support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research has been integrated to the project Sobriétés (www.sobrietes.meshs.fr), and has received as such the support of the regional council of Nord Pas-de-Calais and of the Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie (ADEME).

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Representation of sufficiency through Semiotics

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Journey 1: Obligatorily sufficient people.

Figure 3 :

 3 Figure 3: Journey 2: Voluntarily sufficient people.

  to close. The size of the box (a shoebox) forces him to select what is really important to him or what he can eliminate because he sees it as superfluous or meaningless. The selection of his items is closely related to the duration and the use of the objects in the box. After one year, if he does not use an item, he excludes it from his consumption.

  through techniques of communication such as storytelling. In 2009, for example, a fake British ministry (Ministry of Trying to Do Something about It) has created an innovative communication tool titled Ration Me Up: Carbon Ration Book (Semal and Szuba 2010):

Table 1 :

 1 Presentation of sufficient people's paths She is paying careful attention to her expenses (for example going to charity for food). She is frustrated and unsecure about her sufficiency, as having "not nothing".

	Informant	Occupation	Type of Sufficiency
	Julie, 28

Tax inspector Voluntary: Julie's sufficiency process has been strongly influenced by an environmental activist friend. For her, sufficiency has a political dimension and she is still negotiating a lot of behaviors (such as transportation), which places her between "not nothing" and "not everything".

Jean, 50

Biologist Voluntary: Jean and his wife feel "engaged" in sufficiency for 20 years, when they started to buy organic food. They are now having "not everything" in many fields (transportation, food, house energy). To them, sufficiency is difficult to negotiate as it brings marginalization from mainstream consumption society. Andrée, 60 Medical secretary Voluntary: Andrée feels she has always been involved in sufficiency. But while her reflection on it is stronger, as having "not everything", she is also experiencing more tensions with applying it. This especially because she doesn't feel supported by other people or the society which only emphasizes consumption. Christophe, 42 Biologist Voluntary: Christophe is sensitive to environment through his work, which has influenced his sufficiency path. Not only he is vegetarian for it, and doesn't take car any more, but also pursues the process through renting a place to garden or stopping purchases as much as possible (such as for gifts), placing him as having "not everything". Joseph, 30 Computer scientist Voluntary: Joseph has started a process of sufficiency by being an anarchist activist. Indeed, he set up one of the first AMAP in eastern France. His current level is a balance between "not nothing" and "not everything", as he didn't give up on some consumption areas (such as transportation for vacations), and seems satisfied with it. Marie-Pierre, 52 Social worker Voluntary: Living alone, Marie-Pierre feels she has always been influenced by sufficiency, since living in countryside. Yet, she really engaged the process after experiencing a cancer. During her recover, she felt she wanted to get over things, and is now at the level of "not everything". Raphael, 39 Computer science teacher Voluntary: Married and having two kids, Raphael has started the process of sufficiency when being in couple, first with transportation (no car) and then with food. In many fields, he is almost having "nothing" and harmoniously experiences sufficiency. Yet, he feels he still has progresses to accomplish. Danielle, 52 Unenmployed Obliged: Living alone with her 18 years-old child, Danielle has lost her job for one year, and saw her income decreasing a lot. changed Bernadette's level of life, as she suddenly found herself deprived from economic resources. However, after several years, she tries to express her sufficiency in having "not everything", as a way to feel better about it. Charlotte, 25 Student Obliged: Charlotte comes from a working-class family, and doesn't have much money for her living. Consequently, she started scavenging several years ago, something which has


Camille Fazzari

Robin Macchi

Rémy Casanova

Caroline Nicol

Pascale Chavet

Dynamics of neuromuscular adjustments to the progressive reduction in external forces

This study investigated the dynamics of neuromuscular adjustments to the progressive reduction in external forces, using an individualised analysis Fig. 2 Experimental design Warm-up 100% 60% Body weight 0 3 min 3 min 3 min Unweighting transition (18 ± 3 strides) Methods 2 Conclusion 4 They were not completed at the end of the unweighting transition Neuromuscular adjustments differed between lower limb muscles They were similar between participants for the proximal muscles, but varied for the distal muscles

Quadriceps activity

Hamstring activity

Similar proximal neuromuscular adjustments

Reduces peak knee flexion during stance [3] Accelerates the return of the free-leg [4] Shank muscle activity in some participants

Shank muscle activity in others

Ensures ankle stabilisation when shifting toward a forefoot strike [3]

Varied distal neuromuscular adjustments

No longer observed after 3 minutes of unweighted running [4]

Fig. 1

 1 Fig. 3 Spearman's rank correlations coefficients (ρ) between mean braking force and muscle activity