Identifying barriers and solutions to adoption of social, complementary and/or virtual currencies

Clara Inés Peña de Carrillo*, Josep Lluís de la Rosa i Esteva**, Paulo Nicolás Carrillo Peña**, Peter Pharow***

^* Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga, Bucaramanga, Colombia. Email: cpena212@unab.edu.co

^** Universitat de Girona, Arlab research group, Girona, Spain

^*** Fraunhofer IDMT, Ilmenau, Germany

 

Abstract

With the advent of social and mobile networks, new online communities are being created around sustainable topics (e.g. environmental, social, community development). The phenomena, known as digital social innovation, generates a positive ecosystem where business and social development enabled with new behaviors boosted by social, complementary or community currencies deployed as virtual currencies have a great potential for competitiveness, and entrepreneurship, but also for fostering social responsibility in Europe. This document summarizes actions carried out through the Vircoin2SME European community project (social, complementary or community virtual currencies transfer of knowledge to SME: a new era for competitiveness and entrepreneurship) for identification of barriers and their possible solutions to reduce them in the context of the adoption of social, complementary and virtual currencies by SMEs and consumers. The Case Study method allowed identifying these barriers almost at all on the basis of RES (digital currency of Belgium) and Eurakos (virtual currency of Girona, Spain) complementary currencies operation by which the Vircoin2SME researchers had close contact. Data analyzed were taken through observation, being the project researchers’ direct users of these currencies and, the information records stored in databases concerning the users’ interactions (transactions in trades associated with the RES and Eurakos networks). This research was supported by the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 654767.

Keywords

Sustainable economy, social innovation, digital currencies, entrepreneurship, RES, Eurakos

 

Article Peña de Carrillo et al

To cite this article: Peña de Carrillo, Clara; de la Rosa i Esteva, Josep Lluís; Carrillo Peña, Paulo Nicolás and Pharow, Peter (2018) ‘Identification of barriers and solutions for adoption of social, complementary and/or virtual currencies” International Journal of Community Currency Research 2018 Volume 22 (Summer) 125-140 <www.ijccr.net> ISSN 1325-9547. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15133/j.ijccr.2018.020