CSRDA Discussion Paper Series

No. 25 Empirical Analysis on Motivated Agents among Long-term Caregivers in Japan
Yoshimasa Kato
Yoshimasa KatoHimeji Dokkyo University
long-term caregiversmotivated agentsintrinsic motivationmultinominal logit estimationorganizational philosophy
Goal 7: Affordable and Clean EnergyGoal 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Fact-Finding Survey on Long-term Care Work, 2016

This study investigated ‘motivated agents’ among Japanese long-term caregivers. ‘Motivated agents’ are workers who are driven by altruistic and intrinsic motivation rather than monetary factors, previous studies have shown that motivated agents mostly work at non-profit and public organizations. This study analyses data from the 2016 Fact-Finding Survey on Long-Term Care Work, comprising individual data on Japanese long-term caregivers. I used multinominal logit estimation to identify the dependent variable which indicating the likelihood of each worker belonging to for-profit, non-profit, or public organizations. Factor analysis was used to identify the independent variables, which are motivations derived from a survey question about why workers’ chose their current job. The results show that non-monetary factors affect workers’ choice of organization type. They also show that workers of for-profit companies are more motivated by sympathy with their organizations’ philosophy than workers of non-profit and public organizations, implying that workers at for-profit companies are more motivated by non-monetary factors. This result contradicts those of previous studies. The possible reasons for this discrepancy, notably corporate social responsibility, are discussed.