Verification Experiment to Support the Delivery of Shopping Packages for Elderly People from Local Shopping Areas Back Home

Research Topic
Verification experiment to support the delivery of shopping packages for elderly people from local shopping areas back home

Lead Researcher
Tetsu Yoshida, Associate Professor, Department of Architecture and Architectural Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University

Joint Researcher
Shinichiro Iwata, Professor, Department of Architecture and Architectural Engineering, College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University

This project is a practical implementation study that aims to facilitate elderly people’s continuous independent living in the community through expanding their opportunities to go out by supporting their shopping.

Many elderly people live in the residential area along the mountains in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto City, which requires a 30-40-minute walk (about 1 km) to reach shopping areas or the nearest railway station (Keihan Fujimori or Sumizome).

In order to support these elderly people to go out on foot, we have worked with two community organizations within three elementary school districts (since 2015 and 2019, respectively) to build and set up benches at private properties (homes, stores, facilities for the elderly, religious facilities, etc.) along the walking routes to stations or shopping areas. By the end of the last academic year, the benches were set in 44 places in total. Some locals have reported that elderly people are using them to interact and chat there.

In this project, a verification experiment will be carried out in one of the above two community organizations. A person involved in the Fukakusa shopping street is also a representative of the community organization in the Fukakusa school district, with which we have worked since 2015. There, several delivery methods will be tried out to carry what elderly people have purchased in the shopping area to benches in residential areas by cart or other method. In the experiment, the following factors will be examined: changes in the health satisfaction of the delivery users, their interactions with shopkeepers and acquaintances while shopping in the street, the cost of delivery, and their satisfaction with the delivery service. At the same time, we also aim to find a way to continue this project so that the people involved can operate this service in a healthy manner.

The main objective and effect of this project will be to increase the number of elderly people who go out shopping by envisioning a sustainable shopping support system in residential areas, which is not based on one-off events or subsidies.

2021/07/02