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

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 power-saving education at the workplace, on actual power-saving practices at the household level by local residents. Proactive citizens shared the relevant information and adopted effective and enduring power-saving 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.