Researchers in a now-classic study compared the reported happiness of people who had won large lottery prizes with that of people whose lives had not materially changed. The expectation, going in, was that the lottery winners would report significantly higher happiness, and they did, briefly. But follow-up interviews told a different story. Lottery winners were not, in the longer run, meaningfully happier than non-winners. The financial windfall had produced a spike in happiness that then returned, over time, to roughly where it had been before. Brickman, Coates and Janoff-Bulman, via InsideBE

This finding, which has been replicated many times in different populations and contexts, sits at the heart of one of the most important concepts in behavioural economics. Hedonic adaptation: the tendency of human beings to return to a relatively stable baseline of happiness following even significant positive or negative changes in circumstances.

The implications of this finding go considerably further than the lottery example suggests. And they point, when followed carefully, toward a way of thinking about what we hold, and what we choose to hold that is different from the framework most financial planning assumes.

What Hedonic Adaptation Shows

The hedonic treadmill, the informal name for the adaptation process, works through two specific mechanisms. As income or wealth increases, expectations and desires tend to rise in parallel, which means that each new level of financial achievement produces less incremental satisfaction than the previous one. And the positive emotional response to any financial gain tends to diminish over time as the gain becomes the new baseline rather than a departure from it. Wikipedia — Hedonic Treadmill

A 25-year review of research on income, consumption, and life satisfaction published in the Journal of Happiness Studies in 2026 confirmed this pattern at a population level. Happiness gains from income increases, the review found, tend to decay over time due to adaptation, while spending aligned with intrinsic values and social connection tends to foster more enduring happiness. The review also confirmed that materialistic values and extrinsic goals are consistently linked to lower wellbeing across cultures and time periods. Journal of Happiness Studies

The research establishes that financial gains are, as a general tendency, subject to adaptation, the happiness they generate is real but diminishes over time. And it suggests that spending and holding patterns oriented toward intrinsic values and genuine connection may resist this adaptation more effectively.

The question that follows, which is where interpretation begins, is what kinds of holdings tend to resist adaptation, and why.

Why Sentimental and Meaning-Based Value Behaves Differently

A peer-reviewed paper on sentimental value and hedonic adaptation offers what may be the most precise available answer to this question. The research distinguished between two types of value that an object or holding can carry: feature-related utility, the functional and aesthetic qualities that make something pleasant or useful, and sentimental value, defined as the meaning attached to an object through personal history, relationship, and accumulated experience.

What the researchers found was specific and significant. Whereas feature-related utility tends to decrease for all items with time, as hedonic adaptation works on the initial positive response to a new acquisition, sentimental value typically does not decrease in the same way. It appears to resist the adaptation process, and in some cases to increase as the personal history embedded in the holding deepens. ResearchGate — Sentimental Value and Hedonic Adaptation

This is a meaningful distinction. It suggests that the rate at which a holding adapts, the speed at which the positive emotional response to owning it diminishes, may depend significantly on the type of value it carries. Holdings whose value is primarily functional and aesthetic may adapt relatively quickly. Holdings whose value is primarily relational and meaning-based may adapt more slowly, or may not adapt in the same direction at all.

Olea Legacy’s interpretation of this research, and it is an interpretation, not a claim that the research proves it, is that this distinction may have important implications for how thoughtful people think about what they hold. If meaning-based value tends to resist adaptation while financial value tends not to, then the question of what to hold is not purely a question of financial return. It is also a question of what kind of value the holding generates, and whether that value compounds or adapts over time.

The Annual Delivery as a Mechanism for Resisting Adaptation

One specific finding in the hedonic adaptation literature is relevant here. Research suggests that the interruption of pleasurable experiences can actually enhance rather than diminish them. The reason appears to be that interruption prevents full adaptation, the experience remains, to some degree, novel and distinct rather than becoming part of a permanent baseline. Coglode — Hedonic Adaptation

This finding suggests that experiences which arrive periodically, rather than continuously, may be better positioned to resist adaptation than those which are permanently and constantly present.

The annual delivery of olive oil from a specific ancient olive tree in a specific Greek grove is, in these precise terms, an interesting case. It arrives once a year. It is not permanent and continuous, it is periodic and anticipated. Each arrival carries the specific character of that particular year’s harvest, which is genuinely different from the previous year’s in ways that depend on the weather, the timing of the harvest, and the specific conditions of that season in that grove. The experience of opening it, tasting it, and noticing how it differs from last year’s is not a repetition of a familiar experience. It is a new instance of a familiar relationship, and the research suggests that this kind of periodic, relationship-based encounter may be better positioned to resist adaptation than continuous possession of a static object.

I want to be careful here about what I am and am not claiming. The research does not prove that an annual olive oil delivery resists hedonic adaptation. It suggests that periodic, meaning-laden experiences may resist it more effectively than continuous possession of purely functional objects. Whether a specific holding produces this effect depends on the quality of the relationship the holder has with it, something that cannot be guaranteed and that varies between individuals and contexts.

What I can say, from speaking with people who have held Olea Legacy olive trees across multiple harvests, is that the annual arrival of the olive oil tends to be described not as a routine delivery but as an event, something anticipated, noticed, and experienced as meaningfully different each time. Whether that pattern reflects a genuine resistance to hedonic adaptation, or simply the specific character of a well-cultivated relationship with a living thing, is a distinction I find genuinely interesting rather than one I want to collapse too quickly into a marketing claim.

What This Suggests

Behavioural economics does not tell us what to value. It tells us, that financial gains tend to adapt and that meaning-based connections tend to resist adaptation more effectively. It tells us that intrinsic values foster more enduring wellbeing than extrinsic ones. And it suggests that the rate at which a holding produces satisfaction over time may depend more on the type of value it carries than on its financial magnitude.

These are findings, not prescriptions. Different people draw different conclusions from them, and the specific holdings that resist adaptation for one person may not resist it for another. The research establishes the mechanism. What each person does with that understanding is their own question to answer.

Olea Legacy’s interpretation is that an ancient olive tree, alive, productive, carrying centuries of cultural depth, delivering something genuinely new each year, and deepening in personal meaning as the relationship accumulates, may offer a kind of value that the behavioural economics literature suggests is more durable than many of the holdings that conventional wealth-thinking recommends. This is a philosophical position that we hold with genuine conviction. It is not a claim that the research has proven it.

For the foundational account of what a living legacy is and why the research on meaning and value is central to understanding it, the Living Legacy Guide provides the comprehensive framework. For the argument about why some assets appreciate emotionally while others simply age, a related question approached from a psychological rather than economic angle, Why Some Assets Appreciate Emotionally examines it in depth. For the distinction between wealth and legacy that this research suggests is more than merely philosophical, The Difference Between Wealth and Legacy provides the full account.

To explore what stewardship of an ancient Greek olive tree involves in practice, the Ownership page provides the full account. To begin a private conversation, the Contact page is the starting point.