抄録
The purpose of this paper is to examine what kinds of mechanisms exist behind recent government decisions concerning food-borne risks in Japan. To fulfill this purpose, we employ a conceptual analysis and then a model is built in order to compare how the change of parameters affects outcomes. Then, taking those results into consideration, the basic ideas of this model are applied to the contemporary Japanese political situation in order to explain what kinds of political mechanisms cause extremely strict regulation relating to BSE. A previous study suggests that there is a possibility that consumers cannot accurately perceive real risks and therefore inappropriately make demands of politicians who ultimately adopt policies misled by such inappropriate requests. This paper intends to test this proposition in a far more concrete form than the previous study.
Major findings in this study are summarized as follows:
Firstly, theoretically, excessively sensitive response of consumers to food-borne risks can be explained by the behavioral pattern presented by the Prospect Theory.
Secondly, there is a high possibility that politicians may magnify such consumer response if they act primarily to maximize their probability of being re-elected, especially if they would act following the Median Voter Theorem.
Thirdly, in Japan, the lack of staff with scientific expertise in consumer groups may cause excessive scares among consumers. Furthermore, the lack of such expertise among politicians' staff or advisers cannot restrain consumers from excessive responses. It is highly possible that the subjective probability perception bias in Japan is becoming greater than in other countries.
