# Section 4 Multifaceted ICT Contribution to the Economy and Society

This section reconsiders ICT from the perspective of non-monetary values. ICT is distinguished by having introduced digital platforms, exponential increases in performance, and cloud platforms. Thanks to ICT advances, people can today exchange huge amounts of information for little cost, and the influence on people of ICT advances, and its value, is still growing.

If enterprises and consumers are considered separately, we can say that existing statistics measuring enterprise activities reflect the eventual value of ICT to enterprises. On the other hand, ICT's value to consumers has aspects that existing statistical measures cannot capture. For instance, the value to consumers of Internet content, search services, and review sites that are provided for free or almost for free is not fully expressed in terms of monetary value alone. In this section, we focus primarily on consumers and investigate the non-monetary value brought by ICT in 3 areas: consumer surplus, economy of time, and information assets. We also look at what kind of implications this non-monetary value will have for society and our lives in the future.

### 1. Diversity of ICT social and economic contributions

## (1) Efforts to devise indicators of well-being in place of GDP

In November 2007 the European Commission, European Parliament, Club of Rome, OECD, and WWF held an international conference called Beyond GDP. Beyond GDP has since become an initiative to build indicators that properly assess progress and measure well-being. Specific “beyond GDP” efforts are the OECD’s Better Life Index and Measuring National Well-being in the United Kingdom. These efforts list indicators thought to contribute to social well-being.

### 2. Non-monetary social and economic changes brought by ICT

In the following paragraphs, we provide examples and survey analyses for the 3 types of non-monetary value — consumer surplus, economy of time, and information assets (reviews) — ICT gives to consumers.

## (1) Consumer surplus

### a. Analysis of survey results

As an example of ascertaining consumer surplus quantitatively, we estimated how large a surplus consumers enjoy by using music and video streaming services (Figure 1-4-2-1). The survey asked users how much they would be willing to pay and how much they actually pay for the services. The difference between the two was found as the consumer surplus. The average amount users in their 20s paid per month was about 146 yen. Based on this figure, the consumer surplus per person was estimated to be 204 yen per month.

Users enjoyed a surplus between about 150 and 200 yen per month depending on the age bracket (Figure 1-4-2-2). Users in their 20s benefited from the largest surplus; those in their 30s and 40s, the smallest. For users over 50, the higher the age, the larger the surplus tended to be. Using the monthly per-person consumer surplus, we estimated the annual consumer surplus for the country (Figure 1-4-2-2). The specific calculation was the Internet user population x the usage rate of music and video streaming services x the monthly per-person consumer surplus x 12. Using this formula, the annual consumer surplus was estimated to be around 110 billion yen.

## (2) Information assets (reviews)

### a. Examples

## (i) Review sites

Review sites compile and provide information on prices, reputations, specifications, and other aspects of many goods and services. Typically, users of the sites compare prices at different stores and post reviews, and users can look at comments from other users and ask and answer questions. As more reviews are posted on the sites, the amount of ratings on stores and services increases, consumers can compare goods and services more readily and accurately, and competition between goods and services in the same categories increases.

## (ii) Online auctions

Online auctions let consumers conveniently buy and sell things with other consumers anytime anywhere. Auction sites provide incentives for honest and fair transactions by allowing sellers and buyers to rate each other after a transaction. Users can also see other users' past ratings before starting a transaction, helping them to decide whether to proceed with a transaction. There are also mechanisms for buyers to ask sellers questions. Together, these functions allow consumer-to-consumer (C2C) transactions to take place with an assurance of trust.

## (iii) Sharing economy

The sharing economy refers to online services where individuals let others use their idle assets. The benefit to lenders is earning money from idle assets, and the benefit to renters is being able to select and use services that meet their preferences from a wide range of services without having to own the assets. For the sharing economy to function, there has to be an assurance of trust between the parties. Services have been making efforts, such as letting lenders and renters rate each other and view past ratings and combining ratings with other information, to ensure trust and to improve matching between lenders and renters.

Review-based services continue to get more sophist-