Digital monetary gift-giving practices

Anette Broløs, Erin B. Taylor, Jillet Sarah Sam and Shriram Venkatraman

Chapter 8 in Digital Human Finance, 2026, pp 123-139 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter examines how digital financial services transform gift-giving practices across cultural contexts, focusing on China and Kenya as comparative case studies. Moving beyond applying classical gift theory to digital contexts, we demonstrate how digital infrastructures reconfigure rather than merely facilitate traditional gift exchange. Through analysing China's WeChat digital red packets (hongbao) and Kenya's mobile money networks, we reveal how digital gifting simultaneously preserves cultural values while introducing novel temporal dynamics, social hierarchies and power relationships. Digital platforms act as mediating infrastructures that shape gift practices through their technical affordances and algorithmic governance. The chapter illustrates the emergence of hybrid economic forms that transcend traditional distinctions between gift and commodity exchange, showing how digitization simultaneously enables social connections and commoditization. This chapter describes how digital gift economies represent novel configurations that combine market exchange, reciprocity and platform-mediated sociality in culturally specific ways.

Keywords: Digital Gifting; Digital Reciprocity; Mobile Money; Monetized Relationships; Platform Mediation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035344925
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