Public perceptions of earthquake risk and its impact on land pricing: The case of the Uemachi fault line in Japan

In this paper, we explore how asset pricing reflects public perceptions of earthquake risk using officially appraised prices of land situated along the Uemachi fault, lying along a north-south axis in the east of Osaka prefecture in Japan. We find that active fault risk has been included significantly in land pricing, only since residents and even policymakers first realized considerable earthquake risk involved in the land along the Uemachi fault by observing that in January 1995, the earthquake driven by the Rokko-Awaji fault had catastrophic damages on the southern part of Hyogo prefecture. We estimate that nonresidential land prices along the Uemachi fault are discounted by 4 percent for every 100 meters closer to the fault line.