The sharing economy: from regulation to promotion

I am a member of the Sharing Economy Investigative Committee, which is organized by the IT Headquarters.

The White Paper on Information and Communications, published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, has identified that Japan has a lower level of familiarity for the sharing economy than other countries.

For vacation rentals, the United States is at 87%, Germany is at 86%, China is at 91%, and South Korea is at 91%, while Japan is at 72%.

For Uber, the United States is at 85%, Germany is at 80%, China is at 91%, and South Korea is at 82%, while Japan is at 48%.

The main cause has been identified as a high level of anxiety regarding the safety/reliable of the services in regards to accidents and trouble. The situation requires a response for the use and demand aspects as well as a plan to eliminate this anxiety.

When the government examined this matter last year, the discussions focused mainly on regulations, such as a participation regulation, the obligatory provision of information, and regulations for overseas.

Later, however, there was a change of direction to emphasize the meaning of a sharing economy, moving towards encouraging it and allowing for self-regulation. I support this change, and would like to create a scheme that balances encouragement with safety.

For the sharing economy, one important point is how industry laws will be applied or relaxed for it. However, there also needs to be a discussion on how the sharing economy can move past the boundaries of industry law because C2C is at its core, not businesses.

In order to maintain a standard of service, we had a discussion on the framework for businesses to make voluntary rules, and the framework for the recognition of service providers. We are now considering a model and guidelines for these purposes.

With the consent of the public and private sectors, we will create a framework focusing on joint-regulation rather than public-regulation. This is a creative measure to find a balance between the freedom of the U.S. West Coast approach and the traditional Japanese industrial law-based regulations approach.

One more important point is the degree of freedom for businesses.

Setting aside the black zones forbidden by law or the white zones permissible for business, we are left with the problem: the grey zones. That is where the real juiciness of the sharing economy is. However, Japan is a country where grey zones are shrunken down, making it hard to do business in them.

In truth, there is an “Act on Strengthening Industrial Competitiveness” being enforced that is full of measures for eliminating the grey zones. For sectors where it is unclear if the current regulations can be applied, this scheme will have the authorities examine and judge if the business plans apply or not, and propose deregulation measures where applicable.

These practical applications of the system and expansion plans for measures have also become a theme. We should put our heads together and take action to allow the Japanese-style sharing economy to function without being hampered.