Impact of support agreement between municipalities and convenience store chain companies on store staff's support activities for older adults

In the continuously aging society, private sectors are expected to play a role in older adult care. Implementing an agreement between municipalities and private sectors is one of the key mechanisms for encouraging private sectors to participate in supporting older adults. The study's aim was to evaluate whether the support agreement has promoted support activities by convenience store staff for older adults. A retrospective observational study was conducted between 2013 and 2016 using data from a nationwide survey of convenience stores. The municipality-level matching produced 168 municipality pairs, with 2242 convenience stores that entered into a support agreement with municipalities from 2014 to 2015, and 2141 stores without such an agreement. Convenience store-level logistic regression analysis evaluated the impact of the agreement on staff activities. The analysis showed that some staff activities increased significantly with the support agreement, such as corresponding or collaborating with community support centers (AOR = 3.40; 95% CI: 2.22 to 5.26), participating in role-playing programs for older adult care (AOR = 2.05; 95% CI: 1.01 to 4.26), and attending dementia support lectures (AOR = 18.21; 95% CI: 8.27 to 45.34). Emergency protection for older adults did not increase with the support agreement. The results suggest that the support agreement positively influenced some convenience store staff's support activities for older adults.