Did Fukushima matter? Empirical evidence of the demand for climate protection in Germany

Abstract

This article investigates the extent to which the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011 has had an impact on the private demand for climate protection in Germany. Data are taken from two framed field experiments (Löschel et al., 2013a, b) conducted before and after the disaster. We find that the demand for climate protection in the experiment after the nuclear disaster is significantly higher than in the experiment before the disaster.

Keywords:

• experimental economics
• field experiments
• demand for climate protection
• Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

JEL Classification:

• Q51
• Q54
• C93

Funding

This work was supported by the Leibniz Association.

Notes

¹ For a detailed description of the experiments, see Löschel et al. (2013a, b).

² According to a Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test, the hypothesis that the demand in both experiments is drawn from the same underlying distribution can be rejected with p < 0.01. 

³ All comparisons concerning the differences between the participants in both experiments are based on χ²-tests with p < 0.05. 

⁴ According to the exclusion restriction (e.g., Wooldridge, 2006), we excluded the independent variable Responsibility from the amount decision in order to reduce multicollinearity in Model (2).