Title: Households' choice on reconstruction of a damaged house after an earthquake: characteristics of decisions and effects of subsidies

Authors: Hiroyuki Sakakibara, Hitomi Murakami, Sakae Esaki, Hisayoshi Nakata

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Yamaguchi University, Ube, 755-8611, Japan. ' Division of Environmental Systems Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Yamaguchi University, Ube, Japan. ' Yamaguchi Prefectural Police, Yamaguchi, Japan. ' KDI Corporation, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: Reconstruction of damaged houses plays a critical role in revitalisation of a region after natural disasters. In this study, households| choices on reconstruction of damaged houses were surveyed. Surveyed areas were the damaged areas of Tottori-Seibu Earthquake (2000) and Miyagi-Hokubu Earthquake (2003) in Japan. Using survey data, discrete choice models on households| actual and hypothetical choices were constructed. Parameter estimation results showed that lifetime of a house, damage level and characteristics of a household (existence of children, elderly people|s household etc.) affect households| choices on rebuilding. Similarity between choices in both regions was also found.

Keywords: housing reconstruction; damaged houses; reconstruction subsidies; Tottori-Seibu earthquake; Miyagi-Hokubu earthquake; Japan; regional revitalisation; natural disasters; house rebuilding; regional reconstruction.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRAM.2008.019032

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 2008 Vol.8 No.4, pp.472 - 484

Published online: 27 Jun 2008 *

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