Economic Effects of Emergency Risk Communication: Evidence from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

Featuring
Hiroaki Matsuura
Departmental Lecturer, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies
University of Oxford

Hosted by
Victoria Fan
Research Fellow, Center for Global Development

A tremendous amount of radioactive products were discharged as a result of the accident in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011. When describing the geographical distribution of radioactive contamination, the government, media, and other organizations largely used administrative boundaries (prefectures, municipalities etc.) or distance from the radiation source as a reference.

In this CGD seminar, Hiroaki Matsuura will discuss how this sometimes misleading information about risk, rather than actual risk of radiation, significantly and negatively affected land and other prices in locations near the plant. Although risk information based on administrative or other general boundaries has an obvious advantage of distilling large and complex risk information, the government, media, and other organizations fail to recognize the potential economic effects of misclassifying non-contaminated areas into the contaminated prefectures.