Joint Research on Anshin in Internet Usage

3.1 Model

To study anxiety, we used the results of the group interviews to construct a model of the anxiety generation process in order to clarify how anxiety is generated (Fig. 2). This model includes the following definitions: 1) Anxiety is generated by expectations of problems (e.g., invasion of privacy). 2) There are factors that are the reasons for expecting problems and there are also factors that strengthen the expectations and anxieties. 3) There are also factors that weaken or eliminate the expectations and anxieties. We called these factors anxiety factors. In future, we intend to refine and verify this model and also evaluate the anxiety factor candidates.

Fig. 2. Model of anxiety generation process.

3.2 Control of Internet anxiety

We think that controlling (reducing) anxiety can weaken the feeling of expecting trouble and leads to a kind of anshin. We also think that the anxiety factors are determined by each type of expected trouble for each Internet service. We selected anxiety factor candidates mainly on the basis of the group interview results. They are listed in Table 1. We hope that establishing a method of controlling anxiety will lead to anshin.

Table 1. Anxiety factor candidates.

4.1 Internet users and anxiety

We found that Internet users felt less anxiety about Internet usage than non-users did (Fig. 3). The more time they spent using the Internet, the less anxiety they felt concerning security and Internet communication. People who wrote things and posted them on the Internet (consumer generated media (CGM^*) users) felt less anxiety in their general Internet usage than people who only read content on the Internet. The more frequently people commented on SNSs, the less anxiety they felt about Internet communication. These findings may indicate that anxiety decreases with experience.

Fig. 3. Internet anxiety for Internet users and non-users (in Tokyo).

4.2 Usability and content of anxiety

Many people use online shopping despite having strong feelings of anxiety (Fig. 4). This may indicate that there is a trade-off between anxiety and usability. The most common specific anxiety for general Internet use was the leakage of personal information (Fig. 5).

Fig. 4. Online shopping users and anxiety (in Tokyo).

Fig. 5. General Internet anxieties (in Tokyo).

4.3 Damage experience and news experience

The amount of damage actually experienced by people is generally small. Even for spam emails and spam in blogs (also called blog spam or comment spam), which account for the highest percentage of anxieties in Fig. 5, only 12.0% of the subjects we questioned reported experiencing actual damage from them. Although the values are really too small to let us evaluate the correlation with anxiety, we nevertheless tried to evaluate the correlation, but we were unable to find any significant correlation (the only exception was unexpectedly high Internet charges). By contrast, damage is extensively reported by the news media. Our analysis of the results of the influence of news reports indicates that the more time people spend consuming mass media news, especially newspapers, the more anxiety they feel about security and Internet communication.

5.1 Unbridgeable gulf between anshin and safety

We publicly disclosed our findings in an NTT press release in September 2010 [4]. It stated that Japanese people feel high anxiety about using the Internet although they have less direct experience of trouble than people in other countries. We showed, by using real data, that there is an unbridgeable gulf between anshin and safety. These results (Table 2) show that there are a lot of Japanese who cannot use the Internet with anshin only owing to safety concerns. Specifically, in terms of the percentage of people having experience of exposure of own home address or telephone number on the Internet without permission, Japan ranked low (9th out of 10 countries; 1.2%). However, Japanese feel high anxiety despite having little actual experience of damage (Japan: 2nd out of 10; 82.7%). In particular, Japanese women feel high anxiety (1st out of 10; 75.2%). Japan ranked 1st (65.2%) for people with anxiety about computer viruses without having any experience of damage. Moreover, it ranked 2nd for anxiety about phishing, unauthorized use of credit card details used for online payment, and harmful content being seen by children when browsing, again without any experience of damage (76.4%, 83.6%, and 77.9%, respectively).

Table 2. Experience for exposure of personal information and anxiety (international investigation).

5.2 Internet anxieties of specific countries

We analyzed the results by country to see if people in different countries had specific anxieties. For general use of the Internet, South Korea, the USA, and China ranked high in that order while Japan was not placed so high (5th out of 10 countries). We compared the ten countries in terms of the proportion of people in the country having damage experience, news experience, and anxiety, for eleven specific types of Internet trouble such as fake billing. People in China and Singapore had a lot of damage experience and high anxiety. Those in Germany had much news experience but low anxiety. People in Finland had much damage and news experience but low anxiety. People in Chile do not use the Internet much, but like people in the USA they had little damage and news experience and low anxiety. People in South Korea did not have so much damage and news experience but had high anxiety. People in Japan had little damage experience but much news experience and high anxiety about trouble.

5.3 Anxiety concerning CGM, information leakage, and children browsing harmful content

This section describes our findings concerning CGM, information leakage, and children browsing harmful content (Tables 3 and 4).

Table 3. Anxiety level, damage experience, and news experience for CGM trouble (international investigation).

Table 4. Problems in browsing of harmful content by children (international investigation).

Higher anxiety about CGM was felt in South Korea, China, Japan, the USA, and Singapore. By contrast, lower anxiety about CGM was felt in Finland and Germany. Among the people of countries in the high anxiety column, South Koreans and Chinese had experienced actual damage while Japanese had experienced little damage. Japanese generally had much news experience and Japan ranked 1st out of the 10 countries for the proportion of people having news experience of three cases of CGM trouble.

For personal information leakage, people of Japan, South Korea, and China had high anxiety, much mental anguish caused by incidents, and a high likelihood of occurrence. By contrast, people of Finland, the UK, and Chile had low anxiety, mental anguish, and occurrence likelihood.

For browsing of harmful content such as information about drugs and violent and pornographic images by children, people in the ten countries selected “Many suppliers of harmful content are not adequately arrested” and “Many website managers do not delete harmful content adequately” as being big problems. People in the UK and Japan thought that those two problems were bigger than other problems. Japanese also thought that “many parents do not teach appropriate website browsing” was a big problem (Table 4).