世論 What Japan Thinks

MyVoice recently published this survey regarding home robots. For me personally, all this robot stuff is very gimmicky; static sensor arrays would be much more useful for almost all purposes (except for vaccuuming of course), and the cost of static machinery is far lower that making some virtually useless moving guard robot, given today’s, or even tomorrow’s technology. However, with almost two-thirds of respondents failing to register anxiety at the robotisation of the home, and half keen on welcoming them into their homes, surely this is nothing but another win for the Lizard Alliance and the RoTM™?

MyVoice surveyed 17,958 people registered in the MyVoice community; 42% male and 39% in their thirties. The results are as follows:

Q1: Do you think you’d want to use a robot in your home?

I absolutely want to use	13.9%
I probably want to use	36.0%
I can’t say whether I want to or not	29.6%
I don’t really want to use	12.2%
I absolutely don’t want to use	8.3%

Q2: What sort of robot functions do you want to use? (Multiple answer)

Cleaning the house	58.4%
Crime prevention	55.3%
Home minding	39.2%
Tidying up after meals	34.4%
Clothes washing	26.8%
Ironing	23.1%
Cooking	22.1%
Carrying baggage	21.8%
Healing	19.9%
Play	18.9%
Nursing	17.7%
Driving car	16.9%
Work or study help	15.3%
Communication or chat	15.1%
Health management	12.0%
Child minding or child eduction	10.4%
Others	2.2%
I don’t want to use a robot	11.3%
No answer	0.2%

Note: the difference between “crime prevention” and “home minding” is probably that “crime prevention” implies detection of intruders, whereas “home minding” is more just monitoring the house, answering the phone or the door, watching the cat, etc.

Q3: If you bought a robot, up to about how much would you pay?

Up to 10,000 yen	11.9%
10,000 to 100,000 yen	37.8%
100,000 to 200,000 yen	13.4%
200,000 to 300,000 yen	7.0%
300,000 to 500,000 yen	5.2%
500,000 to 1,000,000 yen	5.0%
1,000,000 to 10,000,000 yen	1.1%
Over 10,000,000 yen	0.2%
I don’t think I want to buy	18.0%
No answer	0.5%

Q4: Are you uneasy about the spread of home robots?

I feel completely uneasy about it	6.7%
I’m a little uneasy about it	27.4%
I can’t say whether I am uneasy or not	34.1%
I don’t really feel uneasy	22.4%
I don’t feel uneasy at all	8.4%
No answer	1.0%

According to this survey by MyVoice, performed at the start of August of this year amongst 12,317 registered members of the MyVoice Community, the following views on electronic money are as follows. 7,002 women and 5,295 men took part in the survey, with almost 40% being aged 30-39.

Q: Select all the electronic money brands you know.

Suica (JR East)	71.3%
Edy (Bitwallet (ANA et al))	63.2%
WebMoney	35.7%
ICOCA (JR West)	34.9%
ChoCOM (NTT)	20.8%
BitCash	14.7%
Others	3.3%
Don’t know about electronic money	11.5%
No answer	0.2%

Q: Have you used electronic money?

Yes	37.2%
No	62.8%

Q: For those who have used electronic money, what brands have you used? (Sample size=4,582 I think)

Suica (JR East)	54.8%
Edy (Bitwallet (ANA et al))	34.7%
WebMoney	23.2%
ICOCA (JR West)	11.0%
ChoCOM (NTT)	5.7%
BitCash	3.9%
Others	4.4%
No answer	0.4%

Note that Suica and ICOCA are regional brands focused around the two conurbations of Tokyo and Osaka, so the overlap between the two brands might be pretty small, although in the Osaka area there has been adverts describing how the ICOCA can be used in the Suica area. I would also suspect that a lot of the Suica and ICOCA users are not using the wallet features of the card – the main use is perhaps just as an electronic season ticket. Personally speaking I didn’t use the electronic wallet portion until over a year after getting the card.

Q: For those who have used electronic money, what have you used it for? (Sample size=4,582 I think)

Travel tickets	55.6%
Convenience store	42.4%
Net shopping	23.2%
Kiosk (usually on station platform)	15.3%
Vending machine	5.0%
Theatre/event ticket booth	3.5%
Supermarket	3.3%
Pharmacy	2.7%
Department store	1.6%
Discount store	1.2%
Others	14.5%
No answer	0.4%

Q: From now on, do you think you want to use electronic money? (Sample size unclear. All participants perhaps?)

I want to use	19.3%
I might want to use	26.8%
I may or may not want to use	31.7%
I don’t really want to use	13.5%
I don’t want to use	8.1%
No answer	0.7%

Sample reasons for answers:

I want to use	34yo male	Cashlessness seems convenient
	20yo female	I want to get Miles
	33yo male	Points and other privileges
I might want to use	42yo female	I’ve got a Suica pass in mind
	25yo male	Handy in emergencies
	32yo female	It seems to be becoming necessary these days
I may or may not want to use	49yo male	Too many types, and the number of cards needed is inconvenient
	27yo female	Refilling the card is a pain. Still just a few places to use the cards.
	44yo male	If I had one I might use it (eh?)
I don’t really want to use	43yo female	I don’t feel I can trust the security aspect
	23yo male	I’m a cash man myself
	39yo female	I can’t yet really understand the whole idea
I don’t want to use	26yo male	I’m concerned that personal information will be disclosed
	30yo female	I’d probably lose all my money sense
	64yo male	It’s unnecessary

I can’t say I’ve seen any cards used outside of station ticket gates myself, but I wonder if people were including their standard credit cards in the list of places they had used these cards? Most Japanese credit cards come with an IC Card component, and most supermarkets have signature-less and PIN-less transactions that are just as good as electronic money. I’d be in the “probably don’t want to use” camp myself, even though I have an ICOCA. The private rail equivalent, PiTaPa, is post-pay, which I am still not 100% sure about myself, especially since even the season ticket component is not paid in advance.

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!