Abstract
In order to measure the economic impact of changes in environmental quality due to climate change in Japan, by using a computable general equilibrium model (CGE) that integrates a utility function that has an environmental quality factor as an independent variable derived from a recreation demand function in a travel cost method (TCM), we aim to estimate the damage cost of beach erosion in each prefecture and in Japan and to evaluate economic effectiveness of hypothetical adaptation measure to restore sandy beach. We use the future projections of beach erosion rates calculated by 2 periods (2031-2050 and 2081-2100), 3 RCPs (RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and 3 climate models (MIROC5, MRI-CGCM3 and HadGEM2-ES), respectively. Also, we assume the average adaptation cost per unit area to be 21,596 JPY per square meter. The main findings in our study are shown as follows. 1) In the RCP8.5, the damage costs of beach erosion were estimated to be from 17.4 million yen per year to 25.2 yen per year in 2031-2050 and from 61.5 million yen per year to 64.4 million yen per year in 2081-2100, respectively. 2) In all periods, all RCPs and all climate models, four prefectures that the cost benefit ratio exceeds 1.0 were Kanagawa, Osaka, Saga and Kumamoto.
