Social Media Communication and the Excess Demand for Houses

Abstract

In the previous Chaps. 6–8, the study’s focus was on excess demand for used cars. In this chapter, this study focuses on excess demand for housing, which can be used as a proxy of the socio-economic recovery activities as discussed in Chap. 5. Particularly, this chapter analyzes correlations between social media communication and the socio-economic recovery activities as reflected in the housing market data (RQ2). As this study examined in Chap. 5, after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, there was the excess demand for houses located in plains and within 3 km to the building damage zones. Therefore, in this chapter, the author considers the excess demand for the houses located in the plains and within 3 km to the building damage zones as one proxy of one of socio-economic recovery activities. Based on the methodology introduced in Chap. 3, the study examines if there were statistical correlations between the excess demand for housing and social media communication. The findings of this chapter suggest that when the local population of the disaster-stricken area started to rent new places to resettle, they communicated more about their opinions about their situations, such as recovery progress, means of transportation, and disaster-related situations. In addition, the results also suggest that people in the disaster-impacted area rent new places to resettle when there were less communication related to nuclear-related recovery activities.