A revolution based on new information technologies has been progressing rapidly in all levels of industrial, economical, social and cultural fields, particulaly involving the consumers' life style. The diffusion of new media technologies has changed the form of communication not only between private corporations and consumers but also among consumers, from one-way to two-ways communication. To transform our society into an information society of the consumers, by the consumers and for the consumers, adult consumer education should cope with promoting consumers' ”media literacy”, which enables them to create and provide the public with consumer information, to use many mean of communication in a complementary way, and to take effective consumer advocacies in our society.

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Recent form shifts in our life arise from an urgent need to a Sustainable Society. To realize such a society, it is essential for consumers to develop an appropriate life-style for the 21 century. This paper focuses on the development of life-indicators as a scale for a Sustainable Society. It uses Theory of Socio-organic Systems, and suggests how life-indicators can be utilized in consumer education. The life-indicators consist of trio-systematic indicators such as ”the state indicator”, ”the relationship indicator” and ”the control indicator” within Socio-organic Systems. ”The State indicator” shows the present state of the systems. ”The relation-ship indicator” shows interaction between the systems and ”the control indicators” controls both the state and the relationship of these systems. Environmental areas are the main focal point of this paper. Consumer education using these life-indicators plays an important role in the process of changing the consumption-oriented life-style.

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In the present affluent society, the amount of consumption is increasing It seems that the more purchases consumers can wake, the more satisfied they Will be But we are already aware that we have to decrease the amount of consumption in order to solve the envirOnmental crisis, although increasing consumption will lead to economical growth The establishment of ”Environ‐ mental Ethics” is one evidence that pointed out our need to limit consumption. The purpose of this paper is to make it clear that we must limit our consumption and change the style of our consumption. In addition, in consumer education educators have to explore the possibility of hoM/ consumers can limit consumption. If educators can encourage students to limit consumption, the educational system will have the power to solve environmental problems and therefore, the concept of consumer education will change.

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The purpose of this paper is to make clear the signiflcance of consumer education towards a ”Sustainable Society”. To achieve this purpOse, ”Sustainable Consumption”, ”Gender”,and the ”Non‐ profit Sector” are important key terms. This point of view is shown in the papers of the UN and IOCU(CI). For examples, these are ”The Agenda 21” of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development(1992), ”The Platform for Action” of Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), and ”Sustainable Consumption” of IOCU in cooperation with consumentenbond (1993). A Sustainable society lies in our effort to integrate environmental education developmental education multicultural education human rights education global education and consumer education.Consumer education must be the core of these education because of the importance of ”Buying Power” in everyday life.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze what kind of educational steps and support are necessary in order to effectively promote disaster management activities from the viewpoint of consumer education. We surveyed the present state and problems of consumers' awareness of disaster prevention, their disaster prevention activities and disaster prevention education. It becomes clear that the consumers' way of every-day decision making and behavior affects their decision making in the case of a calamity. It is concluded that the future education of disaster management needs to promote the consumers' proper understanding of disaster and its economic management.

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This is the first report of a four-part study on comprehensive analysis of the consciousness and actual conditions of the consumers their purchasing behavior from a three points of view, self employed retailers, consumers and administrators. In the first report, we categorize the retailers into three groups by the size of shopping streets, and analyze how each group recognize consumers' purchasing behavior. The results are as follows: the retailers regard " pleasure shopping", " car use ", and " bargain hunting" as the keenest factors to attract customers. In addition they consider their own merchandise control to be the dominant cause for consumers to choose their stores. Compared with individual customers' shop-ping, family buying shows the difference in found volume and distance Likewise, such difference is found among the three groups. The management task to improve the status quo, therefore, varies for each store and shopping street according to its size.

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In order to improve consumer education in home economics education,I analyzed contents related to consumers' purchasing behavior in home economics text books and within school carriculum. I surveyed 487 elementary school pupils and 527 senior high school students in Yamaguchi, Shimane and Tokushima prefecture to obtain information about their purchasing behavior. I found the following: 1. The curriculum requires students to have a consumer consciousness and to grow positive and independent attitudes through home economics education in elementary, junior, and senior high school. 2.The home economics textbooks acknowledge the benefits purchasing and services, and at the same time urge students to do purchasing with consideration for the environment. 3.There are differences in purchasing consciousness and behavior between elementary pupils and senior high school students, as wen as between sex. 4. In order to improve consumer education in home economics education, it is very important to understand the reality of children's family lives and to make enough contact with their families.

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We made a study from the view point of " ;washing", in order to develop teaching materials cultivate consumers" social responsibility. Teaching materials are arranged to have students understand a fact, that is, the environment is unnecessarily polluted by the behavior of the consumers whose over cleaniness sence is affected by various ads. Teaching materials dealing with the washing by hand", and" washing hair" are very useful for students. They can under-stand through scientific measure me how the environment becomes polluted due to the dirty washing water unconsciously thrown away into the environments.

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Consumer related crimes nowadays are complicated and serious Young victims are increasing, which is apparent from the cases brought to the consumer center. Our survey shows that most young people do not know their purchase is based on contracts. They have had few chances to receive education in civil law and about contracts Civil law provisions are the basis to solve various consumer related crimes, and examples are shown in this paper Civil law education seems most effective in preventing such crimes.

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This paper analyzes the standards of living and the structure of measured by the pattern of their debt repayment (regular, irregular or no-repayment). This investigation makes use of a budget expenditure survey covering 144 households Considering budgets including debt repayment, households reimbursing regularly are characterized by their high standard of living. The standard of living in households repaying their debt on an iregular basis is by well under the poverty line. Additional debts are also arising from unpaid housing or fuel invoices. Regular debt payers too may experience an unbalanced budget. The living standard of indebted households tento to become lower than the poverty loine for those who are conscious about repayment. The setting of limits about reimbursment levels in relation to household size and composition is essential for the relief and rehabilitation of these indebted families.

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The paper is based upon observation the office of Consumer Action (CA) which is a Non‐profit Organization (NPO), and also with interviews with the director of CA. The paper is trying to clarify Characteristics of consumer education as advocacy for a minority language. According to research materials, shown that in the U.S.A. many NPOs can be a public corporation, which exempted from federal income tax and contributions to them are also deductible. Based on this fact of the American NPO, I recognize that Japanese comminity consumer education in need to concentrate on 4 topics as follows: 1. Sustainable consumer education by building up non‐profit organizations (NPO)s, 2. Public advocacy of NPOs as a vehicle for consumer education, 3. Citizenships' networks between different organizations in society, 4. The Relationship between consumer education and NPO.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the process of decision making between husband and wife. The information processing is about the consumption of goods and services. The result of this study on information processing regarding expensive consumption, showed that the husband’s skill in information processing was better than the wife’s from the point of quality and quantity of gathered information, whether information itself or not, and whether the needed information is gathered enough or not. This fact shows that, in household consumption, the decision maker is not wife but the husband even if the wife’s opportunities for consumption are more than husband’s. And it also shows the need of education in information processing is required as a form of consumer education.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consciousness and behavior concerning environment and to offer some suggestions on environmental topics in the consumer education curriculum. Findings are as follows: 1. Both students and their parents are concerned with environmental problems and they think that the environment will be worse in the future. Therefore, almost everyone thought that environmental education is very important and needed now. 2. The consumer education curriculum should include both scientific and social knowledge about the environment. Then, the knowledge can be taught in relation to the three steps of consumption activity, 1) buying- 2) using- 3) discording. Therefore, environmental knowledge will be linked with behavior. 3. Educational materials concerning decision making must be created. These should consider and compare the students’ lifestyle with mass‐ consumption of natural resources and alternative lifestyles. 4. Even if it is a very abstract consciousness, environmental awareness has influenced the environmental behavior found in this research.

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The main purpose of this study is to find the ideal education for students to understand advertisement schools. The results of the survey are as follows: 1. Analysis of the Course of Study and the textbooks of Home Economics and Social Studies has shown that there is insufficient mention of both in quality and quantity. 2. An Analysis has shown that the student's level of understanding advertisements is different from item to item. 3. It has also shown that junior high school students are less interested in advertising than other students. 4. All the students have a high level of need for advertisements and the quality of need improves as they get older. It order to solve these problems, we suggest: First, the Course of Study and the textbooks should be improved. Secondly, teachers must develop good teaching materials and teaching strategies.

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The situation that a lot of students must do consumers' decision-making is increasing. Therefore, in this paper, it examined the trends of consumers' awareness based on consumption behavior and consumer troubles. As a result of surveys over five years, the consumer awareness was the lowest in 1992. After that, it was tending upwards. Also, they have begun to cultivate the ability of consumers' decision-making.

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A receipt is given when merchandize is purchased. A receipt is as a proof of purchase only a little piece of paper but plays a great and important role. Receipts were, therefore, collected in this study in order to develop teaching materials for consumer education. Teaching materials using receipts were analyzed and the contents of the education were investigated. From the results of the analysis and the investigation, concrete teaching materials were shown such as how to interpret and make receipts.

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Since Female members of consumer organization,、 /ho actively carry out group or individual learning (collecting information)abOut consumer life, have obvious differences in consumer behavior from female non‐ members, it is confirmed that the learning has an influence on consumer life. Those who passively take part in cOnsumer organizations and whose learning level seems to be low become active in individual learning (collecting information) through group learning in order to obtain a better understanding of consumer life and better consumer behavior. Consequently, giving a chance to learn, or ”motivation to learn”, is a form of learning in adult consumer education For ordinary adults, it is not enought to expect only consumer organizations to complete task lntentional projects like administrative works, are necessary to raise learning motivation.

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This paper is about the consciousness of quality labeling, marks and instruction manuals, which are necessary at the time of purchasing and consuming goods and services opposed the actual state of consumption behavior. The investigation was carried out by questionnaire using aged consumers as the Subjects. It was found that aged consumers are not satisfied by the present actual state of product labeling, and have not connected it to their own consumption behavior. It was inferred that there are problems in both the way labeling should be and with consumers themselves. About desirable labeling, such devices have been needed that impact by the conbination of pictures and simple letters. The colors and the size of letters make important matters conspicuous as well as allowing the expression to being easily understood by the size of letters. On the other hand, it was also considered that aged consumers themselves recognize labeling is a part of goods and services, and they have to exert efforts and learn by seeing, reading and understanding them.

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The recycling-system of government influences the conscious-ness and behavior of the inhabitants. As to the consciousness of the inhabitants, those who collect waste materials in a group such as a town association have much interest in waste matter. Many people become interested in waste matter through news-papers or TV. In contrast to this, the inhabitants living in districts where they collect waste materials become aware of waste matter through public relations magazines or pamphlets. The system also influences the purchasing behavior and disposal behavior of waste matter of the inhabitants. As to the purchasing behavior, the inhabitants living in districts where they collect waste materials tend to buy goods whenever they need them. On the contrary the inhabitants living in districts where they don't collect waste materials tend to buy things in mass at a time. About the disposal behavior concerning waste matter, many inhabitants living in districts where they collect waste materials tend to burn waste matter.

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This study examined the consciousness of waste-matter and the behavior of green consumers in the Chugoku Shikoku district. The results are as follows: 1. Inhabitants who are seniors and live in detached house for a long time are very interested in waste matter 2. Inhabitants who are recycling actively are very interested in waste‐ matter. 3 They behave are green consumers when purchasing consuming and scrapping 4. There are few differences in conciousness the recycling system among inhabitants 5. Inhabitants require a recycling system in which they have leadership, school and social education

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This paper examines five problems in decision making and actions taken to help alleviate water pollution. 1. Consideres how to approarch the environmented issues. The main thinking on the subject was epitomized by NAKAHAR-A's 3 approach. 2. Explain various decision-making styles and methods of these issues 3. Brings up the issue from a contrastive study of syllabus planning and 1, 2. 4. Key words of the decision-making process were as follows:Personal and external factors; Alternative actions; Ways to deal with risk and uncertainty; Ways to handle tension and conflict; Identify and evaluate information. 5. Investigates the effectiveness of 「The Leartning Contents of " The Synthetic Instruction: Water"」

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