The Influence of Future Temporal Distance on Decision-Making in Futurability Education

Abstract: This study examined how introducing perspectives from different future time points influenced high school students’ awareness of social issues and their prioritization of policy measures. "Future Design" has been proposed in recent years to address long-term social issues such as environmental problems. A person exhibits “futurability” when his or her experiences an increase in happiness as a result of deciding and acting to forego current gains in order to enrich future generations, and “futurability” is an important in achieving a sustainable society. Future Design involves practical applications such as municipal policymaking, aimed at achieving a sustainable society. Kurashiki, one of the authors, proposes “futurability education” to foster futurability. One of the effective methods to activate futurability is the use of "Imaginary Future Generations" (IFGs), which represent stakeholders acting on behalf of future generations. In previous studies on futurability education, a generation has been defined as 20 years, and IFGs have typically been set approximately 40 years ahead. However, little research has examined how the setting of future time point for IFGs affects thinking and decision-making, despite its importance in both futurability education and Future Design. This study researches this gap by comparing IFGs set at three different time points: 20 years (2043), 40 years (2063), and 60 years (2083) into the future. The social experiment involved 78 high school students who participated in a group workshop during a university open campus event in August 2023. Students worked in groups of four and were presented with policy cards based on Ikeda City’s 6th Comprehensive Plan in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. By analyzing which policy cards were selected, the study explored how decision-making changed across timeframes. The results showed that revitalizing rural areas and promoting labor policy were more likely to be prioritized when the imagined future was more distant. In contrast, the policy like disaster preparedness were favored for the nearer future. These preferences seem to reflect anticipated societal issues in Japan, such as urban overpopulation and the replacement of labor through AI technologies. On the other hand, the relatively low selection of disaster-related policies for the distant future suggests that students assumed major events, like the predicted Nankai Trough mega-quake, Japan, would have already occurred by then. Across all future generations, high selection rates were observed for policies promoting international exchange, countermeasures against declining birthrates and child-rearing support. This indicates a strong awareness of globalization and Japan’s pressing demographic issues. Meanwhile, infrastructure-related policies such as those involving waterworks or road networks, were selected less often, likely due to the perception that Japan’s infrastructure is already well-developed. This study revealed that changing the time period set for IFGs leads to differences in policy preferences and decision-making tendencies. The findings suggest that, in future-oriented education, setting an appropriate future time point according to the topic and educational objectives can enhance the overall educational effectiveness.

Keywords: future time point, decision-making, futurability education, IFGs

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1006957

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