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Relational goods are non-material goods that can only be produced and consumed within groups, and which are intrinsically linked to relationships and interaction. Popular examples include the enjoyment of a football game in a stadium, where the collective enjoyment of the game adds a relational good in terms of excitement and enjoyment to all in the stadium. This constitutes an experience that cannot be had when watching alone. Other examples include group charity work, friendship or reciprocal love. Relational goods can be necessary for the optimization of an activity like the football game example. On the other hand, like Nussbaum suggest, a relational good may be the relationship in itself, with the good being dependent on the existence of the relationship. Friendships is an example of a relationship in which the value that come from the relationship are tied up in the existence and maintenance of the relationship. The essential point tends to consider relational goods as goods that are produced and consumed simultaneously by those interacting in the relationship.〔 Adam Smith in his 1759 work, ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' first outlined the idea of non-instrumental relational positives. The XVIII century Italian tradition of Civil Economy put the concept of the inner relational nature of the person at the core of the economic science. The idea was largely abandoned until the 1970s by the mainstream (although we can find intuitions in Mill, Marshall, the Austrian school, Keynes, Hirschman), when the discussion of happiness again came to light with the first analysis of the Easterlin Paradox. A solid concept of relational goods was built in the following years in an attempt to reconcile this paradox, and to answer the issue of why voter turnout is higher than rational choice theory suggests. Thus relational goods as an economic concept became more researched in the late 1980s when economists Benedetto Gui wrote ''From ''Transactions to Encounters: The Joint Generation of Relational Goods and Conventional Values (1987),'' and Carole Uhlaner penned ''Relational Goods and Participation: ''Incorporating Sociality into a Theory of Rational Action (1989).'' They aimed to change the way economist think of relationships, and viewed them as non-instrumental goods that have value within themselves. This idea was adopted from other fields that understood human interaction as a fundamental part of human life, with social deprivation being incredibly harmful to human well-being. Economists adopted this concepts, and began to involve relational analysis to study what creates happiness for individuals. It is important to understand that while commodities may be exchanged or consumed during an encounter, it is the utility that comes from the encounter specifically, rather than the utility of the goods consumed, that is considered a relational good. A shopkeeper may sell a good to a customer, but the relational good in that instance is the interaction, the potential enjoyment, sharing and emotional connection that is swapped which is relevant. Due to the highly intangible nature of this connection, relational goods and their value is difficult to measure, and thus study. Many studies instead measure social interactions (volunteering, clubs, church events, parties and gatherings etc.) against self-proclaimed levels of happiness, thus identifying some impacts of socialization. What is infinitely clearer is that deprivation of human interaction can have drastic negative effects physiologically, which aids the hypothesis that relational goods at the very least have health-related utility.〔 Theories on relational goods can have many policy implications for governments. Policies that increase Gross Domestic Product while negatively effecting an individual’s ability to consume and produce relational goods, may have negative long term impacts on society as a whole.〔 == Economic Definition of Relational Goods == The categorization of relational goods is a complex landscape. Uhlaner, for example, describes them as local public goods; this classifies them as goods that can only be enjoyed (and at times produced) within a community or specified sub-section of an economy.〔 Examples of local public goods include local beaches, or parks. As Relational goods require a similar level of participation, Uhlaner defines them as such. Bruni, on their other hand, rejects the notion of categorizing relational goods as either private or public, as that categorizes them in states of exclusivity. As relational goods are not exclusive, and are rather anti-rivalrous than non-rivalrous, Bruni considers these definitions irrelevant. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Relational goods」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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