Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1855:
Well-being effects of a major negative externality: The case of Fukushima
Katrin Rehdanz, Heinz Welsch, Daiju Narita and Toshihiro Okubo
Abstract: Following a major earthquake off the Pacific coast of
Japan, a tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three reactors in
Fukushima, causing a major nuclear accident on 11 March 2011. Based on a
quasi-experimental difference-in-differences approach we use panel data for
5,979 individuals interviewed in Japan before and after the accident to
analyze the effect of the accident on people’s subjective well-being. Our
main hypotheses are that this effect declines with distance to the place of
the event but also with distance to other nuclear power plants. To test
these hypotheses, we use Geographical Information Systems to merge the
well-being data with information on respondents’ distance to the Fukushima
nuclear plant and on their proximity to nuclear power stations in general.
Our empirical results suggest the existence of significant well-being
effects of the combined event of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear
accident that are proportional to proximity to the Fukushima site being
equivalent to up to 72 percent of annual household income. We find no
evidence for increased nation-wide worry about the presence of nuclear
power plants near people’s place of residence
Keywords: Fukushima, subjective well-being, nuclear disaster, difference-in-differences, willingness to pay; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: D62,; Q51,; Q54,; I31; (follow links to similar papers)
32 pages, July 2013
Before downloading any of the electronic versions below
you should read our statement on
copyright.
Download GhostScript
for viewing Postscript files and the
Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing pdf files.
Downloadable files:
KWP%201855.pdf 
Download Statistics
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ()
or Helena Lundin ().
Programing by
Design Joakim Ekebom
