世論 What Japan Thinks

There’s been a survey of opinions on “Warm Biz“, the new initiative after Cool Biz this summer. Cool Biz was to set air conditioners to 28°C and wear short sleeves and no tie, an initiative supported and strongly promoted by Prime Minister Jun-chan. Warm Biz is basically the opposite, to wear thermal undies and set office thermostats to 20°C for the winter. The company I work for supports Cool Biz in theory, but our air conditioners are not very subtle at all, so if they are on they are using blowing out 24°C or 25°C air, which is rather cold on my bare arms. If they are off, like right now, there is no moving air in the office at all so it gets hopelessly stuffy. Note that with Warm Biz they hope to save almost 2.5 times as much energy as with Cool Biz. However, I discovered that Cool Biz saved just a few percentage points of the forecast amount.

The survey took place on the home page for Club BBQ for 24 hours over the 25th and 26th of August, where there were 2,321 self-selecting respondents, 70.8% male, 29.2% female. The sex balance may seem off, but Warm Biz is mainly aimed at businessmen, I feel, so it is not too much of a problem, at least not compared with it being a self-selecting survey.

First up, 78.0% said they supported Warm Biz. Conversely, only 56.7% said they wanted Cool Biz to continue next year.

Perhaps people find it easier to add another layer than take one off. The number of people I see wearing T-shirts under their shirts is quite amazing – I wonder if this is another example of Japanese folk wisdom?

67.3% of those surveyed had heard of Warm Biz, with this perhaps due to the aftereffects of Cool Biz permeating throughout the population.

With 78.0% saying they support Warm Biz, though, where did the extra 10% or so come from? Perhaps this survey was done after reading an article regarding Warm Biz? Over 90% had heard of Cool Biz, however.

Reasons for supporting it included people advocating it themselves (perhaps their office is usually too hot in winter?) and that it will save money on heating. On the other hand, just like for Cool Biz, the most popular dissenting opinion was it being too difficult to work under these conditions.

Regarding Warm Biz becoming established, only 31.4% agreed. 35.9% discounted Warm Biz as just a reaction from Cool Biz, and 48.7% reckoned that there wouldn’t be much difference from last year, indicating many people think it’s just a passing fad.

Back to Cool Biz, 56.7% thought it has been a success this year, although it is supposed to keep running until the end of September.

Looks like still quite a bit of work to do before the public warms to Warm Biz!