Post-Disaster Local Collaboration on Residential Power Saving in Japan: Citizen Networks and Linkage with Local Government and the Workplace

Abstract

The present study examines how post-disaster local collaboration towards effective power savings was accomplished in the summer of 2012 at the household level in the Japanese cities in Yokohama and Kawasaki following a major earthquake. A framework was developed to evaluate the local communities’ capacity for stakeholder collaboration. Results of a survey were analysed statistically to determine the emergence of citizens’ voluntary information sharing, as well as the effects of a local governmental campaign and powersaving education at the workplace, on actual powersaving practices at the household level by local residents. Proactive citizens shared the relevant information and adopted effective and enduring powersaving practices. Some citizens were also responsive to the call for power saving by local government and adopted effective power-saving practices. The residential power-saving education at the workplace was shown to have resulted in more effective and rational power-saving practices being carried out at the household level.