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Do community currencies enhance sustainable quality of life?
[working paper]
Corporate Editor
Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung - UFZ
Abstract Community currencies and their contribution to a sustainable development have been quite widely discussed. In contrast, their potential to raise the personal quality of life of their members and users has been less noted. Combining these two strands, we argue that community currencies enhance an ind... view more
Community currencies and their contribution to a sustainable development have been quite widely discussed. In contrast, their potential to raise the personal quality of life of their members and users has been less noted. Combining these two strands, we argue that community currencies enhance an individual sustainable quality of life. We underpin this by analysing data of an online survey of members and users of community currencies in Austria and Germany. The theoretical foundation of our analysis is the Capability Approach and its notion of quality of life, saying that a high quality of life is characterized by high freedom of choice of valuable doings and beings. A sustainable high quality of life would then be characterized by a high freedom of choice within the limits given by planetary boundaries and further sustainability criteria. This perspective allows inferringthat community currencies do not just contribute to sustainable development via their often emphasized effects in the field of regionalization and local value added, but in a much more encompassing way.... view less
Keywords
Austria; behavior modification; Federal Republic of Germany; sustainable development; economic system; decision making leeway; unemployment; quality of life; barter; resilience; social structure; exclusion; monetary system (national); value added
Classification
National Economy
Document language
English
Publication Year
2013
City
Leipzig
Page/Pages
23 p.
Series
UFZ Discussion Papers, 16/2013
ISSN
1436-140X
Status
Published Version; reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike