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The community currency game “Online Shopping.com”: the prisoner’s dilemma and consumer behavior in a local economy

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Abstract

The decline of local economies has become more serious in recent years. The reason for the widening regional disparities is the drain of people, goods, and money from local economies. Community currencies are considered to be a possible solution to the problem of regional disparities. However, it is rare for a community currency to succeed in local revitalization. The “community currency game” aims to elucidate the effects of local revitalization through experimental trading using a community currency. In this paper, we present a community currency game that aims to increase understanding of the mechanism by which the prisoner’s dilemma affects the behavior of consumers in a local economy. The community currency game “Online Shopping.com” consists of three mini games. The first is the “silent trading game”, the second is the “conversational trading game”, and the third is the “conversational trading game with community currency”. In game 3, we found that most participants chose the town stores. Also, the gross domestic product of the town (total amount purchased in the town) increased. Through the three games, we learned that community currencies have the power to allow participants to escape from the prisoner’s dilemma.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research 17K07979 and we would like to express our gratitude. We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.com) for English language editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Niigata Sangyo University, Kashiwazaki, Japan

    Masaaki Abe & Miyoshi Hirano

  2. Faculty of Regional Development, Taisho University, Tokyo, Japan

    Hitoshi Utsunomiya

Authors
  1. Masaaki Abe
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  2. Hitoshi Utsunomiya
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  3. Miyoshi Hirano
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Correspondence to Masaaki Abe.

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Appendix

Appendix

Game record sheet for the toy store

figure a

The back side of the game record sheet for the toy store

figure b

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Abe, M., Utsunomiya, H. & Hirano, M. The community currency game “Online Shopping.com”: the prisoner’s dilemma and consumer behavior in a local economy. Evolut Inst Econ Rev 17, 345–360 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-020-00179-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40844-020-00179-w

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