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Paper short abstract:

Members of Danish ecovillages have a carbon footprint that is almost 30% below national average and enjoy at the same time a higher life satisfaction despite having a lower income than average. They are happier with less, and present thereby an interesting model of intentional degrowth.

Paper long abstract:

Ecovillages are intentional communities composed mainly of people having left town to live in the countryside, either with the goal of living more sustainably, or with the goal of providing a healthier and safer environment for their children. Members usually spend a significant amount of time in building and maintaining the community by participating in a variety of different communal activities such as collective gardening, preparing common meals, attending chicken, maintaining common buildings and roads, sorting waste, securing a sustainable supply of energy, organizing the local system of shared cars, participating in collective meetings, etc. The high investment in time spent on collective activities means that members have less time to spend working on the labour market. They tend to work part-time and to have lower incomes than average. But at the same time, the community is constituted by a complex set of physical and social infrastructures allowing people to access a variety of services at a minimal cost, due to the high level of sharing and the low cost of housing and food. All in all, members of eco-villages live in an environment of physical and social infrastructures that create a more sustainable framework for their daily life and provide a comfortable materialist life and a rich social life. This makes it possible for people to live happily with less, without feeling that they sacrifice anything in their comfort. Ecovillages thus constitute an interesting model for painless degrowth that succeeds in combining reduced materialistic consumption with higher life satisfaction.