BARTER: moBile sociAl netwoRking supporTing local Ethical tRading

One of the key national challenges is how we can ensure future UK economic success when existing economic models are arguably failing to cope with the pressures of increased globalization. In this research we will consider how raising the understanding of how fiscal localism can produce new complimentary economic models to build a more sustainable society.

This fiscal localism will be promoted through the creation of a system to support ethical trade, which incorporates practices that promote more socially and/or environmentally responsible trade, in a local community. Encouraging individuals to move from seeing themselves as private consumers to public citizens presents two clear challenges to address in relation to supporting wider adoption of local ethical trading:

i. for those who have already bought into ethical trading, how can we provide more information on exactly how their purchases are contributing towards a more ethical and sustainable local economy, thus helping them make informed choices?
ii. for those who haven't yet bought into it, how can we use data on the impact of ethical versus non-ethical trades to encourage them to adopt new purchasing behaviour?

To address this challenge we propose to investigate whether mobile and ubiquitous computing can be applied to support local ethical trade initiatives by: combining elements of social networking, in particular rating, ranking and reputation systems, alongside design practices derived from game feedback systems and elements derived from Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) and Local/Community currencies to produce a new approach we term a Local Wealth Generation System.

This project is aimed at delivering a number of key impact objectives:
(i) Improving Community Life: Given the problems most towns and cities are experiencing in regard to the number of empty shops aimed at encouraging fiscal localism has potential benefits for many different communities.
(ii) Influencing Public Policy on New Economic models for boosting local economies: Given the current economic crisis the outcomes of this project has real potential for influencing local and national government policy on how best we can make the UK economy successful in the future.
(ii) Raising Public Awareness of Science and its impact on public life. Given that the public are at the heart of this research it can provide direct experience of how ICT research can positively affect local communities.