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Who refuses safe but stigmatized marine products due to concern about radioactive contamination?

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Abstract

Radioactive contamination from the Fukushima disaster has undermined the seafood caught around the area. Approximately 20 % of general consumers are reported to avoid seafood from Fukushima, even though it has not been found to exceed the Japanese criteria of radioactivity since April 2015. Based on a survey of more than 2000 domestic consumers in Japan, this study investigated the characteristics of those who boycotted safe marine products from the devastated region, using conjoint analysis with a latent class model. The attributes (levels) included price, three prefectural origins (including Fukushima and adjacent prefectures), six local origins, and two ecolabels targeting white fish meat. The latent class model divided participants into three classes: boycotters (27.5 %), consumers devaluing cod (41.0 %), and ordinary consumers (31.5 %). Boycotters neither believed the radioactive test results from any entity nor bought seafood frequently. Furthermore, they tended not to recognize the Marine Stewardship Council, earned more, and were relatively older than the average.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Fisheries Agency, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Japan. We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.jp) for English language editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Institute of Fisheries Science, Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, 2-12-4, Fukuura, Kanazawa, Yokohama, 236-8648, Japan

    Tsutom Miyata & Hiroki Wakamatsu

Authors
  1. Tsutom Miyata
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  2. Hiroki Wakamatsu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tsutom Miyata or Hiroki Wakamatsu.

Appendix

Appendix

See Fig. 4 and Table 8

Fig. 4
figure 4

Source: Population data from Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications

Sampling number by age groups and regions.

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Table 8 Intervals of coefficients in the three-class model
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Miyata, T., Wakamatsu, H. Who refuses safe but stigmatized marine products due to concern about radioactive contamination?. Fish Sci 84, 1119–1133 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12562-018-1250-1

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