A tremendous amount of radioactive products were discharged as a result of the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in March 2011, which resulted in radioactive contamination of the plant and surrounding areas. 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. I examine how this sometimes misleading information about risks, as opposed to the actual risks of radiation, significantly and negatively affected land prices in locations near the plant. I find that the prefecture border effects – but neither the distance effect from the nuclear power plant nor the effect of the actual risk of radiation – are significantly related to a reduction in land price after the accident. This is to say that, even with the absence of the actual risk of radiation, the land price in Fukushima and its three adjacent prefectures has declined more rapidly than that in other prefectures of Japan after the accident. Although health risk information based on prefecture has an obvious advantage of distilling large and complex risk information into a simple one, the government, media, and other organisations need to recognise and carefully examine the potential of misclassifying non-contaminated areas into contaminated prefectures. Doing so will avoid unintentional consequences to the region’s economy.

This seminar is hosted by the Australia-Japan Research Centre.

To register, email Kaisei Iwano at kaisei.iwano@anu.edu.au.