The Importance of Discount Rate and Trustfulness of A Local Currency for the Development of Local Tourism

Abstract

Local currencies have been used to achieve local economic, social and environmental goals that are not attained by national currencies. Thus, they can also be applied as a mean of the regional development focused on the development of the local tourism. However, trustworthiness and costs of local currencies have been some of the main impediments in their widely usage. Therefore, discount rates that practitioners (including municipal authorities and governments) of local currencies present for potential users might play a key role to deal with these issues. Within this context, this research intends to assess the relationship between discount rates that potential users demand to use local currencies (a paper-based and a digital) and their trust to these currencies. To hit this target, a questionnaire survey was directed to 407 employees of a regional business in Cieszyn Silesia region and the responses were analyzed by binary logistic regression test in SPSS Statistical Software. The results confirm that potential users with more trust to local currencies have more tendencies to demand higher discount rates. Cultural values, occupational status, age, income levels of respondents and potential roles of governments and local authorities in local currency implementations might be the reasons of these findings.