Opinion Expression of Social Acceptance on Industrial Waste Disposal—Factors Affecting Opinion Expression on Honne and Tatemae—

Abstract

This study elucidated the factors affecting the opinion-expression process of social acceptance on public beneficial projects. Hypotheses on the process following acceptance self-evaluation until opinion expression on acceptance were established, identifying two judgment stages: judging the necessity of re-evaluation for self-acceptance and that of cover-acceptance opinion for public expression. For the latter, two experiments were conducted to examine four factors affecting judgment and opinion. The results of experiment 1 suggested that people expressed a more desirable opinion of another person when they have weak, rather than strong, motivations toward plan realization. However, cognition on consequence control did not affect opinion expression. Experiment 2 findings revealed that people expressed a more desirable opinion of another person when they predicted creating a negative impression on the person, than when they expressed genuine self-opinion; the same tendency was observed for when they predicted high-life difficulty than low-life difficulty, owing to expression of genuine self-opinion. Thus, the need for fostering situations wherein people could easily express genuinely held self-opinions on public beneficial projects was discussed.