The Local Exchange Trading System in France (Système d’Échange Local (SEL)): Creating a scale to measure motivations for participation in SEL practice and identification of SEL member profiles

Abstract

While Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) are regularly cited in the literature on collaborative consumption, they have paradoxically rarely been studied by researchers in the field of marketing. In France, although LETS, or SELs (Systèmes d’Échanges Locaux), continue to develop, they suffer from high member turnover. This raises the question of whether the existing SELs are responding to the underlying motivations for participation in SEL practice. What is the nature of SEL member motivations? Are these motivations different from those in collaborative consumption more generally? Is it possible to measure them and thus propose SEL member profiles based on these motivations? A qualitative study of 16 SEL members and a quantitative study of 957 SEL members revealed five types of motivations and five SEL member profiles –‘the intellectual protester’, ‘the novice SEL member’, ‘the affective idealist’, ‘the pragmatic consumer’ and ‘the accomplished SEL member’. The theoretical contributions of this study include notably the importance of the ‘for intellectual enrichment’ motivation and the creation of a reliable and valid scale for measuring motivations for participating in SEL practice. The findings have consequences for SEL management teams, who will be able to use them to reduce high turnover and improve the nature of their exchange offers, the effectiveness of their internal and external communications and the recruitment of new members.