Center for Adventure Economics

URL = http://wiki.couchsurfing.com/en/Center_for_Adventure_Economics

"We coin the term adventure economy to refer to a gift economy that is pay-forward, in-person, global and among strangers. In any economy, there are challenges in allocating resources effectively and avoiding abuse, but these are of special concern in non-market economies among strangers, where we don't have the information mechanisms of the price system ([1], [2]) nor of social relations, and we are also missing the risk-reduction mechanisms of contracts. In this group we develop the allocation and risk-reduction mechanisms for CouchSurfing, an adventure economy."