Consumer Evaluation of Foods from the Disaster Affected Area: Change in 3 Years

Abstract

Since the Great East-Japan Earthquake and the following nuclear power plant accident, consumer anxiety on food and environmental contamination of radioactive substances have spread widely. This chapter examines the change in consumer attitude towards foods, focusing on beef, produced in disaster affected area based on the 6 times of web-based survey from 2011 October to 2014 March. The results showed that the risk of radioactive substances through beef consumption are not regarded as high as microbial hazards. And trust on radiation risk management implemented by government as well as food business were recovering. However, the ratio of those who stated zero WTP for foods produced in disaster affected area were rather increasing or remain constant since 2012. The results of choice experiment indicated providing information of radiation risk and risk management is effective to recover WTP for beef produced in Fukushima while knowledge level remained relatively low. We believe that continuous and accessible communication with consumers would contribute to the recovery of devastated area.