Relationship between a community currency issuance organization’s philosophy and its issuance form: a Japanese case study

Abstract

What kind of philosophies do analog or digital community currency (CC) issuance organizations focus on? To answer this question, we conducted a questionnaire survey on 117 CC issuance organizations in Japan. In this survey, we categorized the target organizations into four groups based on their issuance philosophy. We found three major factors related to the organizations’ self-evaluation regarding the impact of their CC issuance on society. Under such classification, we found a relationship between the organizations’ issuance philosophy and their CC evaluation, and a relationship between their issuance philosophy and their issuance form. From these results, we observed that an issuance philosophy does not uniquely decide the issuance form, but an organization issuing digital CC emphasizes economic value as a philosophy. In addition, we considered that organizations emphasizing economic value when issuing digital CCs may provide positive feedback; they will emphasize economic value based on a self-evaluation that results in fair and efficient trade using digital CCs. Our survey provides some explanations for issuance organizations that use CC as a medium for conveying certain philosophies.