An Economic Multipoint Gravitational Model Expression Of A Transactional Analysis Game: An Application To Recreational Private Land Use Decisions

Abstract

The outcome of interactions between various economic actors has a decided subconscious component. Transactional analysis (TA), which was developed in the late 1950s, provides a cognitive theory about the way that human beings interact with each other on a subconscious level that can be applied to investigation of economic decision making. TA, founded by physician Eric Berne, explains a number of potential human interactions, or social transactions, by framing them as subconscious games. Individual economic actors in markets interact with each other. Those interactions may be influenced at least somewhat by subconscious cognitive processes and TA games. Additionally, because individuals gain experience through each interaction, there may reasonably be expected to exist an historical component in which the subconscious response of economic actors to others in the market and to the subconscious games of others in the market may change over time based on their experiences in prior games. As an extension, an individual’s subconscious response to other economic actors may in part be based on the influence of information, either conveyed through games or via other sources. This study investigates decision strategy in the context of marketplace interaction in which outcomes are influenced by subconscious social transaction games played between individuals. The decision by land owners of whether or not to open private land to outside parties for recreational use is considered as an example. Because interaction necessarily involves some form of influence, the interaction and decision strategy are modeled mathematically by an economic multipoint gravitational model in which each actor both influences all other actors and is influenced by them.