JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Ikigai (meaning or purpose in life) is a concept understood by most older adults in Japan. The term has also garnered international attention, with recent academic attempts to map it to concepts in the Western well-being literature. As well, efforts to use social and home robots to increase well-being have grown, though they have mostly focused on hedonic well-being (e.g., increasing happiness, decreasing loneliness), rather than eudaimonic well-being (e.g., fostering meaning or purpose in life).

Objective:

In this paper, we have two aims. First, we explore how Japanese older adults define and experience ikigai, and relate these to concepts in the Western well-being literature. Second, we investigate how a home robot meant to promote ikigai is perceived by older adults, including which individuals may be most open to having a social robot (QT) in their homes for this purpose.

Methods:

A mixed methods research design is utilized — including 20 interviews with older adults, a survey of 50 older adults, and 10 interviews with family caregivers. For interviews, we asked open-ended questions about older adults’ concerns and sources of ikigai, happiness, and social support. We also asked questions about their perception of the QT robot, based on video presentation. For surveys, a number of well-being scales were used, including two ikigai scales — the ikigai-9 and K-1 — as well as 6 PROMIS scales, measuring meaning and purpose, positive affect, satisfaction with participation in social roles, satisfaction with participation in discretionary social activities, companionship, and emotional support. A number of questions were also asked related to the perception and desired adoption of the robot, as well as questions about older adults’ health status.

Results:

Our results suggest that health is the biggest occupier of older adults’ minds and their most common source of ikigai. As well, though self-rated health correlated moderately with ikigai and other well-being measures, reported physical limitation did not. As opposed to social roles (work, family), we find that ikigai is more strongly related to satisfaction with discretionary social activities (leisure, hobbies, friends) for older adults. Additionally, we find that older adults’ sources of ikigai are eudaimonic and hedonic in nature. These included the eudaimonic aspects of vitality, positive relations with others, contribution, accomplishment, purpose, and personal growth, with the first three most common, and the hedonic aspects of positive affect, life satisfaction, and lack of negative affect, with the first two most common. However, the concept of ikigai is most related to eudaimonic well-being, specifically meaning in life along the dimension of significance. Finally, we find that Japanese older adults have high expectations of a home robot for well-being, mentioning that the robot should support them in a multitude of ways before they would be likely to adopt it. However, we report that those with the highest levels of meaning and satisfaction with their leisure life and friendships may be most likely to adopt a robot for well-being.

Conclusions:

As with well-being in the West, gratitude may be an easy and effective intervention to increase ikigai. As opposed to the US, living alone may increase the desire to adopt QT in Japan. We also suggest personality as potentially moderating the relationship between well-being and interest in robot adoption. Further work should confirm these suggestions. Additionally, we outline a number of ways to improve the QT robot to increase its acceptance, including improving its voice and conversational ability, including many functional features, adding a form of physical interaction or softening the robot’s appearance to engender warmth, and designing the robot to support four facets of well-being: social, emotional, cognitive, and physical.