Extending Social Resource Exchange to Events of Abunance and Sufficiency
This chapter synthesizes SRT and SAS-theory, enabling SRT to analyze abundance and sufficiency in tandem with scarcity for analyzing resource exchange. First, we outline how SRT rests on an assumption of scarcity as the primary resource state causing exchange motivations and the problems caused by that assumption. Second, we used SAS-theory to formalize Scarcity, Abundance and Sufficiency (SAS) in an agnostic manner, tying them to different behavioral strategies that individuals use when engaging with a specific resource state. Third, we formalize the relation between individual and systemic level SAS. This relation is influenced by entitlement functions, allowing the distinction between an individual’s experience of absolute and quasi-SAS. This difference is essential, as quasi-SAS implies different exchange motivations and strategies than absolute SAS. Lastly, we demonstrate the formalized relations through two examples of abundance-based motivations, and how quasi-scarcity requires different explanations than absolute scarcity.