Year: 2020
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Japan's economic growth has been low for approximately thirty years, since the beginning of the 1990s, when the bubble economy burst.In the coming age of a declining birthrate and an aging population, when the size of the labor force will decrease profoundly, Japan needs to improve its factors of production to maintain sustainable growth.In a previous study, the author insisted on the urgency of utilizing physical capital (produced capital and natural capital) to make the efficiency of that capital positive and on the need for investments in education and training to improve the efficiency of human capital.The policies to improve productivity and economic growth are multifold and are typically discussed from the supply side of the economy.Nevertheless, the author focused on the demand side, believing that the policies should be welcomed by consumers to make a real improvement in the economy.A policy to improve productivity should accompany consumers' quality of life and happiness.With the above background, the author selected consumer evaluation of policies of three resources, energy, technology, and human resources, as the theme of this thesis.These resources all relate to "inclusive wealth", which consists of the social values of natural capital, produced capital, and human capital.To measure the consumer evaluation of policies from the demand side, the author conducted internet surveys and analyzed the responses with various econometric methods.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 gives the background of the study and emphasizes the need to measure consumer acceptance of government policies.Chapter 2 is on energy policy.This chapter presents the results of both discrete choice experiments and choice probability experiments to determine citizens' willingness to pay (WTP) for residential electricity produced by solar, wind, and nuclear power and by natural gas to evaluate the three energy-mix scenarios presented by the government of Japan.Additionally, the author measures the effects of positive or negative information about nuclear energy, and it is shown that the information affects citizens' recognition of energy resources.The results indicate that, on average, consumers in Japan had a negative WTP for electricity produced by nuclear power, petroleum, or coal, regardless of the Chapter 2 Evaluation of Energy Policy-Consumer Willingness to Pay for Electricity after the Great East Japan Earthquake - 2.1
DOI: 10.15017/4060146
Author: 森田, 玉雪
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7143898103