Stadtluft Macht Frei (City Air Brings Freedom)

This study tested the “city air” hypothesis, which posits that the social constraints prevalent in rural life are weaker in metropolitan areas, freeing metropolitan residents from pressure to suppress their pursuit of individual goals. To do so, we replicated Yamagishi et al.’s vignette study of pen choice. In the first study using a web-based survey of 821 respondents from all prefectures in Japan, choice of a unique color pen was the highest among respondents from metropolitan areas, while respondents from non-urban prefectures were less willing to choose the unique pen. The second study with 1,398 respondents from Tokyo and rural Japan confirmed the findings.