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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 agent-based 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial argument in the debate around smart meter deployment in the EU is the potential for households to save energy. One strand of research in this field has investigated the effects on household energy consumption of the feed-back provided by smart meters. However, another aspect that deserves attention is the motivation for households to use the feed-back to save energy. This paper explores how the emerging trend of using complementary currencies for sustainability policies could translate into new interventions adapted to the smart meter deployment and capable of promoting more autonomous forms of motivation compared to interventions using official currencies. Three systems designs (rewarding, regulatory and hybrid) are presented and discussed within the framework of self-determination theory. Because the rewarding system S1 can contribute positively people's basic needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, it could lead to more autonomous forms of motivation. The conclusions regarding the regulatory system S2 are less clear, although the hybrid variant S3 that integrates mechanisms from the rewarding system into the regulatory system could be perceived as more consonant with people's basic need for autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth, and responding to the unsustainability of current global financial systems. These parallel systems of exchange (or community currencies) are designed to promote sustainable development by localising economic development, building social capital and substituting for material consumption, valuing work which is marginalised in conventional labour markets, and challenging the growth-based monetary system. However, this international movement towards community-based ecological economic practices, is under-researched. This paper presents new empirical evidence from the first international study of the scope and character of community currencies. It identifies the diversity, scale, geography and development trajectory of these initiatives, discusses the implications of these findings for efforts to achieve sustainable development, and identifies future research needs, to help harness the sustainability potential of these initiatives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]