Crafting international apologies that work: A conjoint analysis approach

Shoko Kohama, Toshiyuki Himichi, Kazunori Inamasu, Nobuhiro Mifune, Yohsuke Ohtsubo and Atsushi Tago
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Shoko Kohama: 12810Hokkaido University, Japan
Toshiyuki Himichi: 47743Kochi University of Technology, Japan
Kazunori Inamasu: 12907Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan
Nobuhiro Mifune: 47743Kochi University of Technology, Japan
Yohsuke Ohtsubo: 13143The University of Tokyo, Japan
Atsushi Tago: 13148Waseda University, Japan and 6287Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2023, vol. 40, issue 4, 419-440

Abstract: Apologies by political leaders to the citizens of a victimized country have attracted attention in recent years as a means of improving relations between nations. Existing studies have identified several elements that make such an apology effective, but from the politician's point of view, it is difficult to issue a statement containing all these elements, and they must then be chosen while considering domestic backlash and relations with countries other than the victimized one. However, it is not sufficiently clear how the victimized country's citizens weigh the elements of the apology when they accept it and how the nature of the harm caused changes this. Therefore, we conducted a survey experiment in Japan, adopting a conjoint design using scenarios depicting fictional US presidential apologies to Japan. Our experiment demonstrated three attributes particularly regarded as important in determining whether people would accept an apology: the reparation amount, whether the apology was official (formality), and the voluntariness of the apology. However, when something that people consider “sacred†has been harmed, reparation proposals are counterproductive, and the optimal apology form may depend on the nature of the harm.

Keywords: Apology; conjoint analysis; experiment; US; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:compsc:v:40:y:2023:i:4:p:419-440

DOI: 10.1177/07388942221094761

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