Behavioral change for energy conservation : case study of post-Fukushima experience in Japan

Sammanfattning: Environmental, social, and economic pressure on energy issues has been a serious and urgent concern in countries like Japan, which is heavily reliant on imported energy. After the Fukushima incident in March 2011, energy issues, notably nuclear energy maters, have drawn a special attention in Japan. For long-term and promising solutions for the issue, demand side of the energy consumption at individual level should be focused. This study hence was carried out to find out possibility of sustainable energy consumption in Japan at individual level and key barriers and drivers to change behavior for energy conservation. 7 in-depth interviews were conducted to examine public reception on energy issues, and barriers and drivers to trigger energy conservation behavior among Japanese people. Also, perspective on energy issues from Japanese government and Japan Business Federation were comparably analyzed. The results identified that the Fukushima incident has little impact on people’s behavior, while there has been increasing anxiety on energy systems among them. The Fukushima incident itself therefore does not seem to affect energy conservation behavior among the Japanese. Rather, it can be assumed that energy conservation can be triggered by personal aspects or situational aspects such as perception on preferable outcome, perceived easiness of achieving the behavior, moral norm (sense of “mottainai”), past habit, and community level of social mood on energy conservation. On the other hand, family support and discomfort were found to prevent from making the behavior to occur. Moreover, since there was an evident distrust of the public towards the government, it was difficult to share the same energy issues between the two sectors, hence, restoration of the distrust is a crucial challenge for the government.