Morbidity Valuation with a Cessation Lag: Choice Experiments for Public- and Private-Goods Contexts in Japan

We conducted a choice experiment presenting respondents with risk reductions for three types of illnesses related to air pollution—pollen allergy, chronic bronchitis, and lung cancer—splitting the sample to test the effects of private-good and public-good contexts on the value of a statistical case (VSC) of each illness type. The results indicate that pollen allergy would be valued less than chronic bronchitis, which would be valued less than lung cancer. In terms of the private/public goods context, when exogenous rates of time preference/discount rates were applied to the estimation procedure, the VSC for a specific illness almost always was larger for the public-goods context. However, because estimated rates of time preference are far larger in the private-goods context (17% versus 1.3%), the benefits are lower, and, as they are the denominator in the VSC calculation, the VSCs are larger. We also find some effects that could be attributed to paternalistic altruism on the rate of time preference, as well as on willingness to pay for illness risk reduction. For instance, respondents with children were willing to pay more for pollen allergy risk reduction than respondents without children but less for lung cancer in the public-goods context.morbidity, valuation, choice experiment, Japan

Age, Health, and the Willingness to Pay for Mortality Risk Reductions: A Contingent Valuation Survey in Japan

A contingent valuation survey was conducted in Sizuoka, Japan, to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for reductions in the risk of dying and calculate the value of statistical life (VSL) for use in environmental policy in Japan. Special attention was devoted to the effects of age and health characteristics on WTP. We find that the VSLs are somewhat lower (103 to 344 million yen) than those found in the virtually identical survey applied in some developed countries. These values were subject to a variety of validity tests, which they generally passed. We find that the WTP for those over age 70 is lower than that for younger adults, but that this effect is eliminated in multiple regression. Rather, when accounting for other covariates, we find that WTP generally increases with age throughout the ages in our sample (age 40 and over). The effect of health status on WTP is mixed, with WTP of those with cancer being lower than that of healthy respondents while the WTP of those with heart disease is greater. The VSLs for future risk changes are lower than those for contemporaneous risk reductions. The implicit discount rates of 5.8–8.0% are relatively larger than the discount rate regularly used in environment policy analyses. This first-of-its-kind survey in Japan provides information directly useful for estimating the benefits of environmental and other policies that lower mortality risks to the general population and sub-groups with a variety of specific traits.willingness to pay, value of statistical life, mortality risk, contingent valuation, age

Mortality Risk Valuation for Environmental Policy

Most benefit-cost analyses of reductions in air pollutants and other pollutants carrying mortality risks rely on estimates of the value of reductions in such risks produced by compensating wage studies, or contingent valuation studies that value risk reductions in the context of transport or job-related accidents. As the authors argue below, these estimates are inappropriate when valuing risk changes produced by environmental programs. The objectives of this paper are to explain why these estimates are inappropriate and to describe an improved approach to valuing reductions in risk of death from environmental programs, especially programs to reduce air pollution. The authors have implemented this approach in a pilot study in Tokyo, Japan. The paper provides estimates of the value of a statistical life based on the pilot study and describes extensions of the approach based on test results. The preliminary results from the Tokyo pilot indicate that individuals are able to distinguish between different magnitudes of small changes in mortality risks and between the same change in these risks occurring at different times (although the latter has not yet been subjected to an external scope test). Changes to the survey and a big increase in sample size may improve performance on the internal validity tests and the results of the scope tests. Although the current results can only be considered suggestive, if they were to remain after administration of the survey to a larger sample, and subject to some other caveats, they would imply that the VSL's currently used in benefit-cost analyses of environmental policies are significant overestimates.

Influential information and factors for social acceptance of CCS: The 2nd round survey of public opinion in Japan

AbstractA public survey was conducted concerning carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) in the months of February and April 2007 in Japan, Previously another CCS survey took place in December 2003, and a set of the questions asked in the 2007 survey were purposely the same as that used in the 2003 survey, Japanese adults were randomly selected to answer a questionnaire either in printed format or in online format. Several versions of the questionnaire were used, and each contained a different educational part, imparting relevant CCS information. 334 people successfully responded to our paper survey in Tokyo and Sapporo while 2156 people completed our online survey across the nation. The questionnaire for the survey contained 5 sets of different information package on CCS and questions asking pros and cons on CCS implementation to analyze influence of information provided on CCS.Based on the results of survey we found: that not many people still know about CCS. Those who have knowledge on CCS show a preference for CCS implementation, however; preference was decreased after obtaining information which we considered was neutral on CCS. These results suggest a possibility that information on negative aspects of CCS (risks, etc.) would not be well known in the general public. We also found that preference for CSS decreased slightly after providing different information on CCS to respondents in the group with the newspaper articles which we considered neutral in comparison with other groups. The newspaper articles contained the information on negative opinions against CCS besides risk-related information as well as information based on an IPCC Special Report: it is assumed that such negative opinions may have influenced opinion formation of respondents. Since CCS is new technology, information about how other people or entities evaluate CCS would influence public opinion. In the sub-sample provided with industrial and natural analogues of preference on geological storage, the views were slightly more positive about CSS in comparison with reported opinions of other groups. This implies information on natural or industrial analogue would help manage perception of risk in a positive way.The result of path analysis to data of a public survey identified four factors, (1) risks and leakage, (2) effectiveness of CCS, (3) responsibility, and (4) fossil fuel use. We found that the factor of understanding the effectiveness of CCS is most positively influential for general acceptance of CCS. I Implementation of geological storage and the factor of risks and leakage become much more influential negatively in the implementation of geological storage compared to general acceptance of CCS, implying that implementation of CC2 geological storage also needs careful communication of risk

Moment Tensor Analysis of Acoustic Emissions Induced by Laboratory-based Hydraulic Fracturing in Granite,

Moment Tensors of hydraulically induced AEs: Hydraulic fracturing is an important technique in the development of enhanced geothermal systems and unconventional resources. Although the fracture modes induced by hydraulic fracturing influence the recovery efficiency of the resources, the current understanding of this relationship is insufficient. In this study, we considered the acoustic emissions (AEs) induced during hydraulic fracturing under uniaxial loading conditions in the laboratory, and applied a moment tensor analysis by carefully correcting the coupling condition and directivity of AE transducers. Experiments were conducted for two types of Kurokami–jima granite samples: those with a rift plane perpendicular (Type H) or parallel (Type V) to the expected direction of fracture propagation (i.e. along the loading axis). In the experiments, both sample types experienced a significant number of shear, tensile and compressive events. The dominant fracture mode for Type H samples is found to be tensile events in which the fracture plane is parallel to the loading axis, whereas for Type V samples, shear events are dominant. This difference suggests that the dominant fracture modes induced by hydraulic fracturing are highly dependent on the relationship between the direction of fracture propagation and orientation of pre-existing weak planes

Event-related potentials in varied-and consistent-mapping visual search

This study investigated the effects of display load (number of positions to be processed) on event-related. potentials (ERPs) during visual search in different mapping conditions. ERPs were recorded from nine adult subjects, who were required to respond if stimuli, which consisted of a horizontal array of five different characters, contained target numbers (consistent-mapping, CM) or target alphabets (varied-mapping, VM). In VM conditions, P300 latency increased and P300 amplitude reduced with increasing display load. Larger display load also resulted in enlargement of search-related negativity. But in contrast, in CM conditions, display load did not affect P300s, nor increase search-related negativity over the whole scalp. The sequential changes of topography of search-related negativity in VM conditions suggests that this negativity may contain three deflections which differed in topography and the time course. A tentative linkage was suggested between the psychological processes involved in the visual search and these deflections as well as the fronto-central N310 and the occipital N190, which were affected by display load both in VM and CM search tasks

Willingness to pay for green electricity in Japan as estimated through contingent valuation method

Renewable energy systems, such as photovoltaic and wind-turbine energy systems, are considered to be environmentally sound from the viewpoint of carbon-dioxide emissions and resource depletion. The cost of energy supplied from renewable energy systems is higher than that of conventional fossil-fuel systems, and this hinders the wider spread of renewable-energy systems. Global environmental problems, however, are becoming more obvious. There is a movement to defray the additional cost of electricity generated in environmentally-sound processes. In this paper, we report the results of a survey using the contingent valuation method (CVM) of the willingness of Japanese households to pay more, in the form of a flat monthly surcharge, for renewable energy. The median value of willingness to pay for renewable energy by Japanese households is estimated at about 2000 yen (around 17 US$with the exchange rate 115 yen/US$) per month per household.Contingent valuation method Renewable energy Green energy fund