抄録
On March 11, 2011, the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake wreaked havoc across northeastern Japan. The disaster caused a serious nuclear accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, which led to radiation leakage across northern and eastern Japan. Concerns over the radioactive contamination of food have grown among consumers after the accident. The Japanese government has issued certain legal guidelines for withdrawing food from markets. However, the demand for agricultural products from Fukushima prefecture and neighboring areas decreased because of contamination concerns. In this paper, the research estimated consumer WTA of spinach and milk from Fukushima and Ibaraki prefectures using the data collected by internet surveys conducted from March 2011 to February 2012 with married women living in Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas. In the estimate this research divided the WTA into two parts: 1) health risk evaluation, the evaluation of products based on health risk from radioactive contamination, and 2) origin evaluation, based on the origin of products without contamination. The main results are as follows: (1) Consumer evaluations were different between Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas. The health risk evaluation was similar in both areas; however, the origin evaluation was different between the areas. (2) The health risk evaluation increased dramatically in August 2011. This increase might be caused by cesium contamination of beef via contaminated feeds, which was discovered in July 2011. The results imply that consumers behave toward food contamination in both rational and emotional ways. To recover from the depressed demand in the affected areas, the Japanese government will need to acknowledge and address both the rational and emotional responses of consumers.
