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Consumers have responded negatively to agricultural products originating from the Fukushima prefecture after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant incident. These consumers’ behavioural changes have caused substantial economic losses for the producers located in contaminated regions through reductions in market prices, consumption quantities and market shares. Remarkably, these losses are observed also for uncontaminated products, posing an opportunity for research in reputation damage. However, existing literature is very rare on empirical modeling of such losses. We utilise the Dixit–Stiglitz demand framework to derive a simple but efficient empirical model that uses market data to quantify reputation damage. This model estimates changes in the perceived quality of a product originating in contaminated regions in relation to those products originating from other competing regions. The model also measures subsequent loss in market share for those products grown in contaminated regions. In our application to Fukushima, results suggest that consumers’ valuation of peaches from Fukushima decreased dramatically (between 22.5% and 23.6%) in the year the nuclear accident occurred, but rapidly recovered in the following years. The results also show that the degree of impact varies across wholesale markets. Fukushima farmers lost about 13.1–18.9% of sales due to reputation damage. Estimates from our proposed models deliver meaningful information in the context of policy interventions such as transfer programmes financed by gainers to compensate reputation losses.

To reduce the environmental burden, many countries are providing consumers with rebates for the purchase of eco-friendly products. Although such rebate programs increase the market share of eco-friendly products and can mitigate environmental problems, they may distort the replacement cycle of durable products. The Japanese government implemented two series of eco-car rebate programs between 2009 and 2012. In this paper, we analyze the mileage of used vehicles and assess whether the rebate programs distorted the vehicle replacement cycle. Our duration analysis reveals that people sold the vehicle with low mileage in the first eco-car period but kept the vehicle with high mileage before the second eco-car period came into play.

Many countries have introduced various policies to improve the energy efficiency of home appliances. Japan introduced the Top Runner Program in 1998 to set efficiency standards for major home appliances. Although the energy efficiency of home appliances significantly improved after the implementation of the program, household electricity consumption has also increased. Using micro-level data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure, we conduct conditional demand analysis to show how energy savings have been lost after the Top Runner Program. We find that households began spending more electricity on space cooling and food preservation after the implementation of the program. Although electricity consumption per air conditioner (AC) has decreased, the number of ACs per household has increased. Conversely, electricity consumption per refrigerator (REF) has increased because households have started buying bigger REFs. The energy savings obtained by the Top Runner Program was lost by the size and stock increases of home appliances. If a household increases the size and stock of home appliances, then it will not be possible to reduce the household electricity consumption by simply improving the energy efficiency of appliances.

Recycling is time consuming and the time available for housework may determine the intensity of recycling activities. In this study, we conducted a survey of 546 Japanese households and asked them their daily practice of five varieties of recycling activities: (1) choice of refill products, (2) use of own shopping bags, (3) sorting of recycled papers from burnable waste, (4) use of own drinking bottles when going out, and (5) use of recycle boxes prepared at the grocery store. We also asked households to record their behavior for two successive days. By combining recycling activity data and diary data, we estimate a multivariate probit model to empirically examine whether time available for housework determines the intensity of five varieties of recycling activities. The empirical result demonstrates that an individual that can allocate sufficient time for housework tends to purchase refill products. He or she also tends to bring their own shopping bags for grocery shopping. We also find that the size of house and the number of family members determine the likelihood of recycling. A housewife living with many family members in a large house is more likely to engage in time-consuming recycling activities.

The promotion of energy-efficient appliances is necessary to reduce the energetic and environmental burden of the household sector. However, many studies have reported that a typical consumer underestimates the benefits of energy-saving investment on the purchase of household electric appliances. To analyze this energy-efficiency-gap problem, many scholars have estimated implicit discount rates that consumers use for energy-consuming durables. Although both hedonic and choice models have been used in previous studies, a comparison between the two models has not yet been made. This study uses point-of-sale data about Japanese residential air conditioners and estimates implicit discount rates with both hedonic and choice models. Both models demonstrate that a typical consumer underinvests in energy efficiency. Although choice models generally estimate a lower implicit discount rate than hedonic models, the latter models estimate the values of other product characteristics more consistently than choice models.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management is a system involving multiple sub-systems that typically require demanding inputs, materials and resources to properly process generated waste throughput. For this reason, MSW management is generally one of the most expensive services provided by municipalities. In this paper, we analyze the Japanese MSW management system and estimate the cost elasticity with respect to the waste volumes at three treatment stages: collection, processing, and disposal. Although we observe economies of scale at all three stages, the collection cost is less elastic than the disposal cost. We also examine whether source separation at home affects the cost of MSW management. The empirical results show that the separate collection of the recyclable fraction leads to reduced processing costs at intermediate treatment facilities, but does not change the overall waste management cost. Our analysis also reveals that the cost of waste management systems decreases when the service is provided by private companies through a public tender. The cost decreases even more when the service is performed under the coordination of adjacent municipalities.

Research on the energy-efficiency gap in developing countries remains very scant. In this study, we apply the hedonic price model to investigate how Vietnamese consumers value the energy efficiency of air conditioners (ACs). We assume that the energy efficiency of ACs in the Vietnamese market improves to that of ACs in the Japanese market. Then, we calculate the payback period by dividing the capital cost to improve the energy efficiency by the annual electricity cost saving. We show that the initial investment cost can be recovered in a short time. In addition, we calculate the implicit discount rate to show how Vietnamese consumers value energy efficiency investment. We find that the implicit discount rate in Vietnam's AC market is much higher than the rates found in studies on developed countries. Hence, consumers in developing countries place much lower value on energy efficiency investment than consumers in developing countries, even though purchasing energy-efficient appliances offers opportunities to save substantial amounts.

Despite the rapid market penetration of hybrid vehicles (HVs), their usage and contributions to environmental protection have not been examined by vehicle traveling data. In this paper, we analyzed Japan’s used car market data to understand how HVs are used on the street. We find GV drivers with high travel demand switched from GVs to HVs during the transition period. Despite HV owners driving much longer distances than conventional gasoline vehicle (GV) owners, they emit less carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, owing to better fuel economy. We also find that HV owners spend roughly the same amount of money annually as GV owners. However, the per-kilometer travel cost of HVs is much lower than that of GVs even if the depreciation cost of the vehicle and vehicle related taxes are included in the analysis.

Although both appliance ownership and usage patterns determine residential electricity consumption, it is less known how households actually use their appliances. In this study, we conduct conditional demand analyses to break down total household electricity consumption into a set of demand functions for electricity usage, across 12 appliance categories. We then examine how the socioeconomic characteristics of the households explain their appliance usage. Analysis of micro-level data from the Nation Survey of Family and Expenditure in Japan reveals that the family and income structure of households affect appliance usage. Specifically, we find that the presence of teenagers increases both air conditioner and dishwasher use, labor income and nonlabor income affect microwave usage in different ways, air conditioner usage decreases as the wife's income increases, and microwave usage decreases as the husband's income increases. Furthermore, we find that households use more electricity with new personal computers than old ones; this implies that the replacement of old personal computers increases electricity consumption.

Although hundreds of thousands of organic products are traded on a daily basis, it is less known how imported organic products are evaluated by consumers in an importing country. The paper analyzes Japanese wine point of sale (POS) data to examine whether consumers differentiate between local and imported organic products. The results of our hedonic analyses show that the premium for imported organic red (white) wines is about 42.996 % (8.872 %) while that for domestic red (white) organic wines is about 6.440 % (1.214 %), implying that Japanese consumers pay higher premiums for imported organic agricultural products than for those produced in Japan.

Differences in the adoption of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) across households have not been fully investigated. Using the microlevel data of Japanese households, we identify the determinants of LED adoption. We take two approaches in the empirical analysis. In the first approach, we define the adoption stage of each household based on whether LEDs are installed in different types of rooms. We then analyze the relationship between the adoption stage and household characteristics based on the ordered logit model. In the second approach, we apply the item response theory method to assess the household’s ability to adopt LEDs. We then analyze the relationship between household adaptability and characteristics based on the two-sided truncation model. We find that the impacts of household characteristics on LED adoption are similar between the two approaches: low-income households do not use LEDs; household heads aged 65 to 74 are active in LED installation, although those older than 75 are less active; people living in old or rented houses do not use LEDs. Finally, we find a large variation in LED installation across prefectures.

Previous studies revealed that preferences for environmental policies differ among individuals, and the practice of pro-environmental activities varies considerably. If such heterogeneities exist, one natural question arises. How are preferences for environmental policies characterized? To answer this question, we analyze micro-level data from the 2002 Japanese General Social Survey (JGSS). JGSS is a nationwide survey and includes both sociodemographic information and respondents opinions on a variety of issues. In the 2002 survey, respondents were asked about their practices with respect to six types of waste management activities. We apply a Graded Response Model (GRM) to gauge the level of difficulty in engaging in these activities. Subsequently, we examine whether ideological orientation or trust in society determine the waste management ability of respondents, based on a two-sided truncation model. The empirical results demonstrate that neither ideological orientation nor trust in society influence the waste management ability of respondents. In contrast, we find that the demand for better environmental conditions influences waste management ability, and respondents who consider the government's environmental protection to be insufficient spend time on waste management activities. We also found that people who spend time on volunteer activities are also likely to spend time on waste management efforts.

Although the fat-pad-sliding method reported by Loeb and the “arcus marginalis release with preservation of orbital fat” method reported by Hamra are useful techniques for correcting tear trough deformity in the Asian population, including Japanese patients, occasional cases of tear-trough deformity have persisted even after surgery. To solve this problem, the authors developed a novel orbicularis oculi muscle overlap method, which has enabled them to obtain good results. The orbicularis oculi muscle overlap method was performed for 10 patients (9 women and 1 man) with prominent tear-trough deformity. The average of these patients was 52 years (range, 34–72 years). The origin of the orbicularis oculi muscle was elevated at its adherence to the maxillary bone, and the innermost portion of the origin of the orbicularis oculi muscle was excised by a width of 6 to 7 mm to reduce the muscle tension. This muscle flap was overlapped relative to the orbital fat, which was repositioned over the orbital rim and sutured in place. Tear-trough deformity improved in all cases, and the patients were highly satisfied with their flat lower eyelids. The orbicularis oculi muscle overlap method is effective for thin eyelids with prominent tear-trough deformity. This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .

In recent years, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques have increasingly been applied to settle environmental disputes. The order of occupancy often becomes a point at issue in such settlement processes. This paper analyzes a micro-level dataset of environmental ADR to examine how the order of occupancy affects the settlement process. The results of duration analysis show that dispute settlement takes longer when the polluter starts emitting air pollutants or creating noise prior to the victims’ occupancy.

This study examines how working hours and the opportunity cost of time affect an individual’s decision to participate in a time-consuming pro-environmental activity—namely, the purchase of refillable products—while using data from the Japanese General Social Survey 2002. By purchasing refillable products, an individual can reduce the amount of waste that needs to be disposed; however, she or he must spend time refilling bottles (i.e., a pro-environmental activity). Our empirical results demonstrate that individuals who work long hours and those with high wage rates tend to purchase nonrefillable products. Therefore, both time constraints and the opportunity cost of time are important factors in the decision to undertake pro-environmental activities.

In order to explore the complex mechanisms of married women’s decisions in matters of childbirth, we studied empirically the relations between family size and aspects of lifestyle through a questionnaire survey administered in 2006 to married women living in the city of Suita, Japan, a suburb of Osaka. Lifestyle was taken as a complex of mutual relationships among individual (biographical, psychological) and social (socioeconomic, social support) factors, and our aim was to clarify differences in Japan in lifestyle among married women based on the number of their children. Analysis of 495 respondents showed mothers with only a single child were more self-reliant: they tend to give birth at a late age, enjoy cooperation with their husbands in family finances, be psychologically at ease, and not seek help from others in child rearing. Mothers with three or more children embody more of the traditional role for Japanese women: they tend to give birth at an early age, be reliant on their husbands financially, be less at ease psychologically, and seek others’ help in child rearing. These differences suggest that more focus on psychological, not just economic support in government policy to counteract declining fertility is an important issue for future consideration.

Using the data on waste household electric appliances in Japan, this paper examines the effects of community characteristics on the frequency of illegal dumping. The results reveal that the frequency of illegal dumping is higher in a community with a high unemployment rate. An increase in the disposal cost and decrease in the law enforcement’s ability to enforce the regulations lead to an increase in illegal dumping. The paper further evaluates the role of community participation in the prevention of illegal dumping. It is shown that the surveillance and reporting systems in cooperation with the local residents have contributed to the reduction of illegal dumping.

The use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to solve environmental disputes is expected to increase in the near future. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental ADR empirically. However, the majority of empirical literature of environmental ADR provides merely descriptive case studies. Using a large micro-level database from Japan, this paper identifies the characteristics of pollution disputes addressed by ADR and correlates those characteristics to the duration of disputes. Using the strike analysis for reference, we estimate the standard duration models of environmental ADR. The analyses demonstrate that pollution disputes involving health damage are resolved promptly. Air pollution problems affecting multiple households are also expeditiously resolved. Moreover, we find that representative actions prolong the settlement of environmental disputes.

Recent studies have predicted that the costs and benefits of curbside recycling programs will vary considerably across municipalities. In this paper, we examine how the characteristics of municipalities are reflected in curbside recycling policies. Our analysis of Japanese municipal data reveals that municipalities implement recycling programs that fit the demographic profiles of their residents. Municipalities with a considerable number of single-recycler households tend to implement simple waste separation programs. The labor market positions of spouses have different impacts on recycling policies. We further find that the municipalities implementing comprehensive recycling programs collect plastic bottles and containers more frequently than do other municipalities. This implies that the municipalities need to take measures to effectively execute comprehensive recycling programs after implementing them.

CEOs of big companies may travel frequently to give their philosophies and policies to the employees who are working at world wide branches. Video technology makes it possible to give their lectures anywhere and anytime in the world very easily. However, 2-dimentional video systems lack the reality. If we can give natural realistic lectures through humanoid robots, CEOs do not need to meet the employees in person. They can save their time and money for traveling. We propose a substitute robot of remote person. The substitute robot is a humanoid robot that can reproduce the lecturers' facial expressions and body movements, and that can send the lecturers to everywhere in the world instantaneously with the feeling of being at a live performance. There are two major tasks for the development; they are the facial expression recognition/reproduction and the body language reproduction. For the former task, we proposed a facial expression recognition method based on a neural network model. We recognized five emotions, or surprise, anger, sadness, happiness and no emotion, in real time. We also developed a facial robot to reproduce the recognized emotion on the robot face. Through experiments, we showed that the robot could reproduce the speakers' emotions with its face. For the latter task, we proposed a degradation control method to reproduce the natural movement of the lecturer even when a robot rotary joint fails. For the fundamental stage of our research for this sub-system, we proposed a control method for the front view movement model, or 2-dimentional model.

People use various information sources to resolve service quality uncertainty. This paper focuses on word-of-mouth communication among mothers. We conduct a survey of mothers with children in kindergarten to determine whether they use information from their friends on the choice of kindergartens and children’s clinics. We identify the factors that influence mothers’ word-of-mouth communication. We find that younger and wealthier mothers use information from friends more frequently for the choice of children’s clinics. We also examine whether the behavior of mothers is influenced by the communication skills of other mothers in the classroom. We do not find network externalities in mothers’ word-of-mouth communication.

When two markets are vertically related, the government can control pollution at the upstream as well as the downstream market levels. This paper employs the stylized model of input price discrimination and compares the effectiveness of upstream and downstream pollution taxations. We consider the situation in which downstream firms have heterogeneous abatement technologies and an upstream monopolist performs input price discrimination against them. In order to mitigate pollution, the government imposes input tax on the intermediate inputs and emission tax on the pollutant. We show that the degree of input price discrimination decreases with a rise in the input tax and increases with a rise in the emission tax. We further examine the effect of a green tax reform in which the government changes the source of taxation from input tax to emission tax. We argue that although this green tax reform may reduce the tax revenue of the government, it will certainly increase social welfare.

OECD countries reduce or eliminate certain taxes when they introduce new environmental taxes. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the incidence of such green tax reform in an oligopolistic industry. The paper shows that a rise in taxes could result in the expansion of the aggregate pollution in the presence of a large technology gap. The paper further shows that the government loses tax revenue as a result of the green tax reform if it continues to apply the same environmental standard. This implies that the government needs to raise environmental standards to keep the existing level of public spending after a green tax reform.

A new annular-type non-isothermal adsorber is proposed, which makes it possible to separate a multi-components gas mixture continuously. For the effective operation of the adsorber, it is essential to control the temperature distribution in the two dimensional space (axial and angular direction) of the adsorber. In this work, the controller design is based on a method reducing distributed parameter system (DPS) to lumped parameter system (LPS) through the eigenfunction expansion. The advantage of this method is that the design of the feedback controller is very simple because the reduced LPS model is completely decoupled. The results show that the whole temperature distribution in the adsorber is estimated accurately from several measurements by using the Kalman filter as an observer. The designed servo controllers' performances are satisfactory in spite of using the reduced order LPS model.

After extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL), perinephric hematomas, while uncommon, are a serious complication involving the risk of blood transfusion and subsequent impairment of renal function. We report a rare case of ESWL-induced renal laceration in which an expanding retroperitoneal hematoma required blood transfusion but was treated successfully without surgical intervention.

A new attempt, based on the fuzzy reasoning, is proposed for prediction of flow patterns occurring in a given situation. The prediction algorithm is implemented in a fuzzy expert system INSURE, which is provided for execution of fuzzy inference based on the fuzzy-rule base. The rule base is constructed from experimental data only in literature and/or laboratory. The prediction system is tested for horizontal flow of air-water system. It is shown that the satisfactory performance can be obtained.

Treatment of 6-anilinouracils with diethyl azodiformate led the corresponding alloxazines (benzo[g]pteridine-2,4-diones). This synthesis involves initial formation of Michael-type adducts [6-anilino-5-(1,2-bisethoxy-carbonylhydrazino)uracils] followed by dehydrogenative cyclization with further diethyl azodiformate.