Although communication of non-verbal information such as affect or emotion plays important roles to maintain relationships among people, communication media have had emphasis on explicit information communication and not on affect communication. In particular, little is known about how people perceive communication of affect appropriate or not in given circumstances. This study investigated factors that influence people’s perceptions of the appropriateness of affect communication. Japanese male participants (N=167) were assessed their personality for overall trust, self-image, and empathy. Participants rated their perceptions of the appropriateness of communicating their affect in various situations involving combinations of nine factors from the seven possible responses of Display Rule Assessment Inventory. Ten factors were found to influence perceptions of the appropriateness of affect communication: valence of self-affect, valence of affect of others, social role, audience size, psychological distance, privacy, security, overall trust, self-image, and empathy. Implications for design of future communication media are discussed.

Although electronic money (e-money) has many benefits for consumers, public transportations, and retailers, there are many areas that e-money has not penetrated. Our research objective is to obtain suggestions for the parties concerned as to accelerating consumers’ e-money adoption and spreading e-money more. For the purpose, a questionnaire on usage awareness and usage intentions for e-money was conducted to consumers. By an exploratory factor analysis, six factors, including perceived transportation/shopping convenience, were extracted. Through a confirmatory factor analysis using the six factors, three models are constructed by structural equation modeling: a usage frequency model by consumers and the usage intention models by users and non-users of e-money. By analyzing the models, it is found that making consumers recognize “transportation convenience” and “shopping convenience” of e-money, and understand usefulness in their daily lives are most important for making the frequency of e-money usage higher, continuation of usage by users and obtaining new users.

The purpose of this research is to show the way of Business Change enabled by IT corresponding to Business characteristics. As a classification of Business characteristics, this research is using the concepts of Business Life Cycle and IT Role for each Business. There are 6 steps of Business Life Cycle, and there are 4 types of IT role. The hypothesis of this research is as follows. ‘The way of Business Change enabled by IT is different by each step of Business Life Cycle and each type of IT role’. By the survey of 600 Japanese companies in 2012, the hypothesis was supported. Finally, using Business Life Cycle as a competition-driven axis and IT role as an IT-driven axis, this research shows 6 choices of the way for Business Change enabled by IT. These 6 choices are useful for selecting suitable Business Change for each company.