On Environmental Risk Management: The Interactions of Economic and Noneconomic Factors
This paper aims to discuss environmental risk management from a new point of view. Although there is a growing literature dealing with the relation between the economy and the environment in the absence of risk and uncertainty, it is quite unfortunate tha
- PDF / 347,156 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.36 x 666.15 pts Page_size
- 62 Downloads / 171 Views
Abstract This paper aims to discuss environmental risk management from a new point of view. Although there is a growing literature dealing with the relation between the economy and the environment in the absence of risk and uncertainty, it is quite unfortunate that the effects of a variety of risk factors on such a relation have not been intensively investigated by social scientists. Before 11 March 2011, most people believed in the myth of absolute safety. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake really took place, however, their concept of risk for nuclear power generation has been changed completely. What was once regarded as unthinkable may be a thinkable reality. This clearly indicates the necessity for studying environmental risk management in a new perspective. It is shown that mere applications of the conventional expected utility theory would possibly result in wrong conclusions. In order to newly establish a more realistic theory of decision making under conditions of uncertainty, this paper attempts to combine both economic and noneconomic factors in a more general framework than ever before. There remain many other possibilities for future research. Keywords Environment • Risk management • Noneconomic factors • Nuclear power plant
1 Introduction The purpose of this paper is to discuss environmental risk management from a new perspective. The paper is especially concerned with the relationship among the following three key concepts: risk, the economy, and the environment. It is true that there is a growing literature dealing with the last two in the absence of risk
Y. Sakai () Faculty of Economics, Shiga University, Hikone, Shiga 522-8522, Japan e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 H. Shibusawa et al. (eds.), Socioeconomic Environmental Policies and Evaluations in Regional Science, New Frontiers in Regional Science: Asian Perspectives 24, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0099-7_23
429
430
Y. Sakai
and uncertainty.1 It is noted, however, that the introduction of risk factors would probably cause a drastic change for the conceptive framework and analytical tools. First of all, we have to discuss what risk is all about. In historical perspective, there exist two different concepts of risk – old and new.2 In old times, the following four used to be the most fearful items in Japanese people’s mind: Earthquake, lightning, fire and arrogant father.
Japan is a rather small yet beautiful country. It is a long archipelago spreading from the subarctic area to semitropical zone: it is surrounded by so many seas and contains so many volcanoes and hot springs. And as the old saying goes, the Japanese people have experienced so many earthquakes, so many lightning, and so many fires since the beginning of time. However, fearful fathers are now almost nonexistent, actually being replaced by friendly papas. Time has changed so drastically since then. In modern times, we have to deal with new kinds of risk factors. Among these new factors, the following four items may be very co
Data Loading...
