Will compensating volunteers via a complementary currency system increase volunteering activities for elderly care in Singapore?

Abstract

Can money buy everything? Or are there goods and services that markets do not honour

and money should not buy? While current debates on the increasing reach of markets

usually present the choice in terms of either strictly social market or strictly monetary

market, this paper proposes a third, intermediate option: a Complementary Currency

System (CCS), or a parallel system of exchange. We propose a CCS in the form of an

online game called „SingaReach‟. SingaReach aims to tackle the challenge of providing

affordable elderly care in Singapore that caters to both the physical needs for assistance

and the psychological needs for companionship and contribution of the elderly.

SingaReach also allows people to exercise both their selfish and altruistic desires at the

same time. To test the concept with our target groups, we carried out 7 experiments with

65 participants. The experiment results show that SingaReach leads to gains from trade

and monetary cost savings. In addition, the SingaReach platform contains features of

both social and monetary markets, showing that the choice between strictly social and

strictly monetary market is an unnecessarily restrictive one. By moving out of the

analytical blind spot of having a single type of currency, we show that man-made

institutions can adapt to the complexity of human nature, and that there is much to gain

from doing so.