| Title |
What drives businesses to transact with complementary currencies? |
| ID_Doc |
77776 |
| Authors |
Reyns, A |
| Title |
What drives businesses to transact with complementary currencies? |
| Year |
2024 |
| Published |
|
| DOI |
10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108181 |
| Abstract |
There is an ongoing debate on complementary currencies' (CCs) contribution to a transition towards resilient and sustainable economies. As part of this debate, this paper investigates which factors lead to significant acceptance and sufficient growth of a CC from a bottom -up perspective, i.e., based on its members' decisions. First, we identify the benefits and costs driving firms' use of CCs and find four factors that constitute a trade-off: credit gains, reciprocity expectations, coordination costs, and intrinsic motivations. Second, we use an agentbased model to explore how these elements determine CCs' success as a network. Our key finding is that the coupling of intrinsic motivation with preferential attachment - a phenomenon where members are more likely to transact with each other rather than with outsiders - may be the key to growth and acceptance: these results suggest that intrinsic motivation provides an incentive to join the network, but preferential attachment is the emerging economic rationale that drives firms' acceptance of CCs. The identified trade-off and the theory of intrinsic motivation -preferential attachment provide new avenues to investigate under what conditions CCs contribute to resilient economies. |
| Author Keywords |
Complementary currencies; Local currencies; Agent-based modelling; Small and medium enterprises |
| Index Keywords |
Index Keywords |
| Document Type |
Other |
| Open Access |
Open Access |
| Source |
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED); Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) |
| EID |
WOS:001217743700001 |
| WoS Category |
Ecology; Economics; Environmental Sciences; Environmental Studies |
| Research Area |
Environmental Sciences & Ecology; Business & Economics |
| PDF |
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