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.

中文翻译：

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是什么促使企业使用互补货币进行交易？

关于补充货币（CC）对向弹性和可持续经济转型的贡献一直存在争论。作为本次辩论的一部分，本文从自下而上的角度（即基于其成员的决定）研究了哪些因素导致 CC 的显着接受和充分发展。首先，我们确定了企业使用CC的收益和成本，并找到了构成权衡的四个因素：信用收益、互惠预期、协调成本和内在动机。其次，我们使用基于代理的模型来探讨这些元素如何决定 CC 作为网络的成功。我们的主要发现是，内在动机与偏好依恋的结合（一种成员更有可能相互交易而不是与外部人交易的现象）可能是成长和接受的关键：这些结果表明，内在动机提供了一种激励加入网络，但优先依附是推动企业接受 CC 的新兴经济理由。所确定的权衡和内在动机偏好依恋理论为研究CC在什么条件下对弹性经济做出贡献提供了新的途径。