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Article History

Received: 25 June 2024

Accepted: 23 January 2025

First Online: 5 February 2025

Competing interests

: The authors declare no competing interests.

: This research obtained ethical approval from the Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Economics and Management, Tohoku University, Japan, on June 24, 2023. The chair of the Research Ethics Committee approved the investigation related to this study without the provision of a formal reference number. All procedures involving human participants adhered to Article 3 of “The Internal Regulations for Research Ethics Review Concerning the Conduct of Surveys at Tohoku University.” We certify that this research was conducted under the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki. All questionnaires were obtained by considering the informed consent of the participants, and all participants completed it voluntarily and anonymously.

: All questionnaires were administered with the participants’ full informed consent obtained through written consent forms during January 18–26, 2024. During the study’s planning phase, we ensured our interview protocol adhered to the ethical standards set by Tohoku University before accessing the questionnaire. Participants received consent forms detailing our institutional affiliation, research objectives, data usage policies, and privacy protection measures. None of the questions solicited personally identifiable information, and the questionnaire platform guaranteed untraceable IP addresses. We confirmed that all participants had acknowledged the consent forms before proceeding with the formal questionnaire by clicking the “I Agree” button on the digital platform before proceeding with the formal questionnaire. The system was designed to prevent access to the questionnaire until this explicit confirmation was received, ensuring that consent was properly documented for each participant.