ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors compare the response of Japanese nationals with American nationals living in similar earthquake risk areas, and select study areas deemed to be at high seismic risk. The study had two primary purposes. First, the authors wanted to test, in a different cultural setting, generalizations about the relationships between perceived risk and mitigation behavior that had been found in the United States. The second goal of the study was to explore empirical similarities and differences in personality structure and response to earthquake hazards in the two societies. The Japan study areas are also in a seismically active region. The Japanese study areas selected for this survey were the wards of Tsurumi and Kanazawa in the Kanagawa prefecture and the cities of Yaizu and Shimizu in the Shizuoka prefecture. The Northridge earthquake of January 1994 had occurred less than 10 months before the survey began in California.
