Reply speed to mobile text messages among Japanese college students: When a quick reply is preferred and a late reply is acceptable

•Showed situations where a quick reply is desired in mobile text messaging.•Showed situations where a slow reply is acceptable in mobile text messaging.•Women tend to determine desired reply speed from message content.•Men tend to determine desired reply speed from situation of self and others.•Individuals differ on emotions conveyed and desired speed of reply. Speed of exchange is important in communication using mobile phones. This study analyzes responses to a questionnaire survey of Japanese university students about replies to mobile text messages. Respondents were asked to indicate situations where a quick reply was desired and situations where a slow reply was acceptable. Free responses were classified broadly into seven groups such as “attributes of the other party,” “one’s own emotional state,” “one’s own situation,” and “situation of the other party.” Additionally, gender differences were seen in these free responses, with men more often referring to the attributes of the other party and their own situation and women more often referring to the content of the text messages. The results of the questions asking respondents to rank emotions by desired speed of response showed that there are individual differences in the relation between the type of emotion conveyed and the desired speed of reply (e.g., a quick reply was desired when joy or apology was conveyed). These individual differences were then aggregated into three types by cluster analysis.