Asian Optimism and German Pessimism

Mei Wang - April 20, 2021

Key findings

In our survey among more than 700 respondents from five different countries, we selected three very distinct technologies to elicit public opinions:

•  mobile phone payment
•  nuclear power
•  autonomous driving

The difference between EastAsians and Germans were similar for all three technologies: Germans perceived more risks, saw fewer benefits and were overall more critical towards these technologies. Important to note is that this discrepancy did not result from ignorance on benefits or risks, as the respondents were directly asked to state their opinions about a number of explicitly mentioned benefits and risks, each with a short explanation. The difference is particularly surprising in nuclear power where Japanese who were affected by the Fukushima disaster in 2013 were less critical about nuclear power plants than Germans, as well as in regards to autonomous driving where Germany with its car companies is a forerunner in innovation. Still, acceptance in Germany is significantly lower than in all East Asian states in our sample (China, Vietnam, Japan, and Taiwan).

Our culture influences the way we perceive technology

A typical explanation for the difference is riskperception, i.e., censorship in China leads to a media bias that suppresses reports about potential technological risks. This explanation, however, is difficult to sustain, given the fact that risk perception on technologies, e.g., in Taiwan, a democratic and open society, is very similar to China.

Gender plays a role when it comes to the perception of technologies – but not everywhere

Not only culture, but also gender, plays a role when it comes to attitudes towards technologies. While in East Asia differences between men and women regarding technology perception are small or insignificant, the differences in Germany are huge: in fact, German men do not see more risks or less benefits to technologies than East Asians, and the cultural difference can solely be attributed to German women. This is a striking result of our study that raises many open questions and, we hope, opens the way towards a critical discussion about what gender stereotypes lead German women to such a technology-aversion.

Technologies and state-control

Should technologies be tightly controlled by the state? We asked this question in the context of social media. In this case, the answers did not depend on gender, and varied less by culture, but depended strongly on the political system in question: respondents in the non-democratic states (China and Vietnam) were much more positive about state-control than those in democratic states (Taiwan and Japan). It seems that open media makes people aware of the shortcomings of state control and the benefits of an open society with fewer regulations. 

What can we learn from all of this?

First and foremost we learn that we should abolish the narrative that positive attitudes towards new technologies simply reflect the naivety of an uninformed public of non-democratic states like China. This argument consciously disregards people in democracies like Taiwan or Japan who simply do not agree with our negative attitudes towards technologies. A modest self-reflection on whether our worries about technologies are perhaps sometimes blown out of proportion and ultimately harmful to our economy and our social welfare would be in place. Also, the narrative of a cultural desire for more state control which is often proclaimed by Chinese officials is mostly fictitious: where East Asians are free, the wish for state-control is basically as small as it is, e.g., in Germany. Only in non-democratic countries like China or Vietnam is state-control favoured. The most likely cause for this mindset seems to be self-evident.

Second, steps should be taken to actively reduce the enormous gender gap in Germany regarding the perception of technology. If German women have a significantly worse impression of technologies than men, this may lead to a number of negative consequences, e.g., regarding job choices or the adoption of welfare-increasing technologies. These gender differences, as the example of East Asia shows, are by no means natural or instinctual, but rather very much a social construct. Education must detect its causes and develop methods to change the situation. Focusing on gender-inclusive language, however, is perhaps irrelevant to this problem, as, e.g., use of gender in language is also considered problematic in Vietnamese and Japanese, but does not seem to lead to noticeable gender differences in technology perception in these countries.

Literature reference

• Rieger, M. O./Wang, M./Massloch, M./Reinhardt, D. (2021): “Opinions on technology: a cultural divide between East Asia and Germany?”, Review of Behavioral Economics, in press.