No-tolerant Consumers, Information Treatments, and Demand for Stigmatized Foods: the Case of Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident in Japan

Six years on from the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, some consumers still avoid purchasing foods from Fukushima prefecture even when their safety is scientifically guaranteed. Exploiting this situation, we demonstrate how the willingness-to-pay (WTP) approach can be misleading to analyze the demand for food that is stigmatized by some consumers. Conducting choice experiments for rice in Japan in 2016, we explicitly separate the consumers who excessively avoid Fukushima foods (no-tolerant consumers) from other ordinary consumers. We then investigate whether the WTP for Fukushima rice and the safety standard label are systematically different between the two types of consumers. We also examine how providing additional scientific information influences the WTP differently between the two types. We found that 33% of our sample were no-tolerant consumers, and their WTP for Fukushima rice was substantially lower than the market price while ordinary consumers WTP was higher than the market price. Without distinguishing the two types, the average WTP became lower than the market price even with the safety standard label, which misleadingly understated the value of Fukushima rice and the label. Lastly, we found little effect of providing additional scientific information on the WTP in both types. Acknowledgement :