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A Statistical Analysis Between Consumer Behavior and a Social Network Service: A Case Study of Used-Car Demand Following the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011

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Abstract

When a large-scale disaster hits a community, especially a water-related disaster, there is a scarcity of automobiles and a sudden increase in the demand for used cars in the damaged areas. This paper conducts a case study of a recent massive natural disaster, the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 to understand those car scarcities and demand in the aftermath of the catastrophe. We analyze the reasons for the increase in demand for used cars and how social media can predict people’s demand for used automobiles. In other words, this paper explores whether social media data can be used as a sensor of socio-economic recovery status in damaged areas during large-scale water-related disaster-recovery phases. For this purpose, we use social media communication as a proxy for estimating indicators of people’s activities in the real world. This study conducts both qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. For the qualitative research, we carry out semi-structured interviews with used-car dealers in the tsunami-stricken area and unveil why people in the area demanded used cars. For the quantitative analysis, we collected Facebook page communication data and used-car market data before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. By combining and analyzing these two types of data, we find that social media communication correlates with people’s activities in the real world. Furthermore, this study suggests that different types of communication on social media have different types of correlations with people’s activities. More precisely, we find that social media communication related to people’s activities for rebuilding and for emotional support is positively correlated with the demand for used cars after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. On the other hand, communication about anxiety and information seeking correlates negatively with the demand for used cars.

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Notes

  1. In this study, we use “the damaged area” to refer to Miyagi and Iwate prefectures which are the most tsunami-damaged prefectures. We did not include Fukushima prefecture in the damaged area because although Fukushima prefecture was another severely damaged prefecture, it suffered more from the nuclear-power plant incident.

  2. The authors refer to [45] for certain arguments in this section.

  3. A Japanese car category whose engine volumes are 660 cc or less.

  4. For the interviews, this study chose used-car dealers and a used-car auction association in Miyagi prefecture. Because Miyagi prefecture includes diverse damaged places and because we selected the interviewees carefully (as described in Table I), we regard our interviewees as appropriate representatives of used-car dealers and of an auction association in the damaged area.

  5. The initial list of Facebook Pages was provided by Professor Shyhtsun Felix Wu, the University of California, Davis [46].

  6. The numbers of posts/comments for each 2 weeks grew since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The disaster stimulated people's participation in their Facebook Pages (the number of unique Facebook Pages in Japan grew after the disaster). Therefore, in this study, we calculated the ratio of word appearances rather than number of word appearances so that we were able to analyze the dominance of each topic.

  7. The real prices of the used cars were calculated based on the ‘automobile’ deflator of the fiscal 2015.

    Consumer Price Index (CPI).

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Acknowledgements

An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 16th International Conference of the Japan Economic Policy Association, in Naha, Japan, on November 5th, 2017. We would like to thank the session chair, commentators, and participants at the conference for giving constructive comments and advice. This study was partially supported by a research grant, ‘Proto Award’, which the first author received. We would like to show our gratitude to the Proto Corporation which provided various used-car market data and financial support and gave us the opportunity to conduct interviews with used-car dealers. This study is also partially supported by the Graduate Program for Social ICT Global Creative Leaders, in which the authors participate. In addition, the authors would like to thank Professor Shyhtsun Felix Wu from the University of California, Davis, for providing us the initial data from Japanese Facebook Pages’ profiles, and Professor Toshiyuki Nakata from the University of Tokyo, for giving us continuous support so that we could conduct our data analysis smoothly. This study received ethical approval (No. 17-2) from the Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo.

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  1. Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yuya Shibuya & Hideyuki Tanaka

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Correspondence to Yuya Shibuya.

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Shibuya, Y., Tanaka, H. A Statistical Analysis Between Consumer Behavior and a Social Network Service: A Case Study of Used-Car Demand Following the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011. Rev Socionetwork Strat 12, 205–236 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12626-018-0025-6

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