Heterogeneous effects of the Great East Japan Earthquake on community salience according to their ages

To capture the level of positivity in the real world, we follow psychological studies on greeting card-sending behavior27 and use data on the number of New Year’s greeting cards mailed. Clarke’s study (28) on the sociology of empathy and other emotions noted, “The underlying theme of all these cards, and it is often an explicit one, is that the sender is connected to the recipient, notwithstanding the temporary separation, figurative or literal, that adversity demands.” Fact That these cards are being bought and sent is evidence of empathy standards.” Furthermore, studies in Japan discuss that New Year’s cards form networks of “affinity” 29,30. Ishise and Sawada use the number of messages sent to measure the social capital accumulated through prosocial behavior. Accordingly, we believe that the variant of New Year’s greeting cards can be a reasonable measure of “own positivity”.

Although sending New Year greeting cards is customary in many countries, it has extraordinary significance in Japan; On average, a Japanese person sends about 25.2 New Year’s cards per year. Since New Year’s cards are expected to arrive by January 1, they should be posted at least a week in advance. Timely dispatch of cards entails the financial and non-financial costs of purchasing, writing and sending them without immediate financial benefits. Hence, the number of cards charged can express the level of turnout in the community. Moreover, sending greeting cards will generally not entail obvious future benefits. We believe this provides a controlled environment for measuring positivity among a large population in the real world. Furthermore, since timely posting of cards requires commitment, the number of cards is affected in part by the degree of each individual’s current bias.

Two sets of data

We use our own unique datasets from two disaster-affected communities in Japan. The first dataset is from Iwanuma, which was negatively affected by GEJE. Obtained as part of a population census conducted between November and December 2016 under the Japanese Aging Assessment Study (JAGES), a survey that began in 201033. It enumerated all residents of Iwanuma aged 65 or older. Notably, people aged 65 and over are defined by the World Health Organization as elderly, and the official retirement age for Japan has been 65 since 2013. Partial data were obtained in the city of Iwanuma as part of JAGES, 35, 36. The survey protocol was approved. By the Human Subjects Committee of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, the Ethics Committee of the Tohoku University School of Medicine, and the Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, Research Ethics. A panel including human participants from Nihon Fukushi University. Respondents signed an informed consent form. We have followed the STROBE statement to report our observational study. Voluntary participation and the right to withdraw at any time are emphasized. This study is consistent with the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. We conducted a postal survey of all Iwanoma residents aged 65 years or older, between November and December 2016 (n = 7421, response rate = 74.5%). Because the 2016 dataset does not contain home damage information, we obtained that data from the 2013 Panel Survey data (N = 2741). The sample size decreased further due to missing observations in the dependent variables used in the analysis.

We collected the second dataset from Futaba, Fukushima Prefecture, which was located within a radius of 2–10 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. GEJE has so affected this community, that the evacuation order was placed immediately after the failure of the nuclear power plant as a result of the GEJE. With the support of the Futaba City Office, in July 2016 we sent out survey questionnaires to the nearly 3,000 addresses listed as regular recipients of the city’s newsletter. Recipients have complete discretion regarding the return of completed (anonymous) surveys. Voluntary participation and the right to withdraw at any time are emphasized. This study is consistent with the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. In this scenario, informed consent was waived by the ethics committee of the Office of Life Sciences Research Ethics and Safety at the University of Tokyo. We have followed the STROBE statement to report our observational study.

model

To test the hypothesis, we defined treatment variable d, which is an ordered variable for the level of disaster damage affecting prosocial behavior in an age-specific manner. We set up the following model analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) to estimate the effect of an unnecessary heterogeneous treatment:

$$Y_{it}=\alpha_{0}+a_{\delta }^{AGE}d_{i}+bY_{it – 1}+X_{it}\gamma \,+\,\varepsilon_{it }, $$

(1)

where Yit is a favorable measure for individual i in year t, d is a variable representing exposure to disaster, Yit-1 is a delayed proxy variable for a measure of social belonging for individual i in year t-1, X is a set of observed control variables, and is a well-behaved error term . In Eq. (1), the effects of disaster causal “processing” on Y can be investigated by the estimated parameter, aδAGE, if disaster exposure d is orthogonal to the error term. Note that we allow heterogeneity of treatment effects depending on each respondent’s age or age group. If the age ratio is less than 0, exposure to disasters exacerbates the individual’s appeal to society; If the lifetime is less than 0, it undermines the positives. We allow this parameter to be age-specific to capture heterogeneous age effects. In addition, we explore that this variability depends on each respondent’s working status.

when estimating the equivalent. (1), we need to consider the sample selection bias generated by the Futaba data. According to the 2015 and 2020 population censuses, Futaba had approximately 6,900 residents and 2,600 households prior to the disaster in 2010, and approximately 6,600 residents and 2,300 households in 2015. Surveys were directed at heads of household only and 499 responses were received, with a response rate 17%. This response rate is not considered low compared to the general response rates to surveys in Japan. The actual response rate was higher than 17% as the 3,000 addresses included some duplication between heads of household and those who requested the newsletter. However, as shown in Figure 1, the age distribution of respondents in our data was correctly skewed and centered around the mean, compared to the actual distribution of the population in the city of Futaba – based on the 2010 Japan census. To address possible sample selection bias in the data , we used a function-control approach with a standard Hickman-corrected term in our regression analyses, matching our data to 2010 census data for age, sex and residential areas data points in Futaba. The estimation procedure consists of two steps. In the first step, we included all interactions in the three categorical variables as covariates of the survey response regression: age, sex, and residential areas. In the second step, we estimated the main regression equation with the inverse Mills ratio, and modified the estimated variance and covariance matrix by the Bayesian parametric smoothing method. The boot copy number was 400.

Figure 1

Age distributions of Futaba survey participants and residents of Futaba based on the 2010 census of Japan. Data source: Data from the 2010 Japan Population and Futaba Survey.

variables used in the analysis

The primary dependent variable in our analysis is the total number of 2016 New Year’s cards mailed (the number of 2016 New Year’s cards mailed). To measure this variable, we used each respondent’s answer to the following survey question in our surveys, “How many 2016 New Year’s cards have you mailed?” According to the Japan Post, the company sold 3.2 billion cards in 2016, which means that the Japanese sent out about 30 New Year’s cards each. In our data, subjects sent an average of 37 and 29 cards, respectively, in Iwanuma and Futaba. This could reflect different age compositions (Table 1). According to Japan Post32, people need to send out New Year’s cards at least a week in advance (say, on or before December 25) because the cards are supposed to arrive on January 1. Another outgoing mail. However, we also considered that people would not send New Year’s cards if they were in mourning. To address this, as an independent variable, we included a dummy that takes the value 1 if the respondent did not send cards because he was sad and 0 otherwise. This treatment is justified because mourning can be seen as external.

Table 1 Summary descriptive statistics of Iwanoma and Futaba data.

To get more insights from the results with this New Year’s Cards variant, we also used the hypothetical unmotivated dictator game variant for the Iwanuma analysis, which is a response in percentile (0, 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100%) to the question: “Suppose That you have received a cash transfer of 5000JPY from us We would like to ask you to specify how this money will be divided between you and a randomly selected (anonymous) person from your community Out of the 5000JPY endowment given to you, how much would you send to your anonymous partner?No disclosure About who you and your partner are to each other.” With a foreign exchange rate of 110 Japanese yen per US dollar, 5,000 is roughly equal to $45. This question was included in the 2016 JAGES survey in Iwanoma.

As the pre-disaster (late) dependent variable, Yit-1, positives in the ANCOVA model estimation of Eq. (1), we include a global confidence variable. It is based on attitudinal survey questions about trust, following the General Social Survey (GSS) and the World Value Survey (WVS). I asked, “In general, would you say most people in your community can be trusted?” and “In general, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful with people?” in Iwanuma and Futaba, respectively. These are measured using 5-point and 4-point Likert scales, respectively, in Iwanuma and Futaba (Table 1). While we ask the GSS-WVS trust question in Futaba as a retrospective question about trust before a disaster, the pre-disaster trust question in Iwanuma relates to general trust towards “someone in your community” asked in the wave of the 2010 survey of the JAGES panel. Note that the variables of the GSS-WVS confidence questions have been used extensively in the current studies 13,37,38,39,40,41.

For the independent primary variable, level of harm (d), our questionnaire ordered the score on an officially approved home damage level report. The local government officially certifies the damage level of each house through detailed metric surveys designed by the central government. Hence, we believe that this damage level data is accurate although it is self-reported. For the survey at Iwanoma, we presented five options: (1) no significant damage, (2) partially damaged, (3) half destroyed, (4) almost collapsed, and (5) completely collapsed. For the Futaba scan, we gave four options: (1) No major damage, (2) Partially damaged, (3) Half destroyed, (4) Completely collapsed. Based on the Futaba City Office’s guidance, we combined the disaster damage categories “on the verge of collapse” with “half destroyed”, according to the damage level categories used in official reports on GEJE by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. We excluded those who did not answer the question about the level of damage from our analysis. We treat these damage variables as continuous.

Furthermore, considering that personal discounting rate or impatience influences positives in repeat games and that this current bias can influence the number of New Year’s cards written and mailed before the deadline, we measured and included current bias or excess discounting before the disaster. . We followed up on previous studies 42 that use individual timing to complete homework tasks during summer vacations for elementary and middle schools (Sawada et al. 33; Supplementary Information, Figure S1). For the analysis, we treated the homework variable as continuous—the higher the value, the higher the current bias level.

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