Utility and fairness concerns in policy evaluation among Japanese people

The purpose of this research was to examine the cognitive process involved in policy evaluation among Japanese people, focusing on three recent political issues in Japan (the Jusen problem, consumption tax rate and the U.S. Marine maneuvering fields). We mailed a questionnaire to 3,000 Japanese people over the age of 20, and obtained 993 responses. Although utility concerns were dominant in the evaluation of all the policies, we found fairness concerns affected it independently of utility concerns. We determined people's political attitudes by the political parties they supported. The results showed the predominance of utility concerns across all the supporter groups, but fairness concerns also affected policy evaluation in all the groups except supporters of the Japanese Communist Party.