OTA RUI    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Commerce    Position   Professor
Language	English
Publication Date	2021
Type	International Conference
Peer Review	Peer reviewed
Title	Consumers’ Perception on Product Quality: An Empirical Study on the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster
Contribution Type	Sole-authored
Journal	Cities for People from Theory to Practice
Journal Type	Another Country
Volume, Issue, Page	pp.270-275
Author and coauthor	Rui Ota
Details	Although it would be easy to understand that product quality is an important factor in our purchasing decision, it might be difficult to capture it. For example, many consumers have not purchased rice produced in Fukushima after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster occurred even though Japanese Government has provided supportive information on its quality. This shows that product quality that consumers perceived may play an important role in their purchasing decision. In order to quantify the consumers’ perception of product quality, this paper utilizes a logit model to estimate the mean utility from products. The paper demonstrates that the mean utility from rice produced in Tohoku area dropped by 31.8% for consumers who purchased the rice in the Greater Tokyo area after the disaster. The drop in mean utility implies the drop in product quality that consumers have perceived, and this could explain the decline in consumption of rice produced in Fukushima.