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The effect of hazard shock and disclosure information on property and land prices: a machine-learning assessment in the case of Japan

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Abstract

The occurrence of 6.7-magnitude Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake on 6th September 2018 made local residents in Japan realise the underneath hazardous threat to their own safety and residential dwellings. Japan has faced various natural disasters for a long time, and Government chose to unveil these hazard data in details to the public to raise every one’s alertness. Despite their long-term awareness of hazards, this short-term unexpected event should have impact on local real estate markets.

Given the transaction data of properties and lands, this study used machine-learning algorithms to examine whether the unexpected hazard shock (i.e. 2018 Hokkaido Earthquake) or the observed local hazard information in geographic areas (i.e. long-term evaluation of each real estate) would be capitalised into the prices of residential properties and lands in the case of Hokkaido, Japan. It is assumed that the difference in the characteristics of disaster notification would alter individuals’ risk perception and thus the evaluation of properties; compared to uncertain, infrequent occurrence of earthquakes in the unknown future (i.e. beyond the scope of objective estimation), the release of long-term hazardous information (tied to each property or land), which is more perceivable in near future, is more likely to be capitalised into real estate.

It is found that housing/land attributes are still the key features to real estate values in Hokkaido. In comparison with short-term unexpected hazard shock (i.e. 2018 Earthquake), the long-term hazard threats are more influential to prices of properties and lands. This is possibly due to people’s awareness of the hazard conditions of local communities while deciding where to reside.

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Notes

  1. Please refer to Fire and Disaster Management Agency [総務省消防庁]. Accessed on 5th October 2018 https://www.webcitation.org/72xVIgUSB?url=http://www.fdma.go.jp/bn/22afa3f0714fc2c15c13739de8ad0910c82b2e8c.pdf.

  2. Please refer to World Bank ‘Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis’. Accessed on 5th October 2018.

    http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/621711468175150317/pdf/344230PAPER0Na101official0use0only1.pdf.

  3. Please refer to ‘Explanation of the National Earthquake Prediction Map: 2018 Edition’ [全国地震動予測 地図 2018 年版の解説], which was released on 26 June 2018, and then revised in January 2019, Accessed on 4th July 2019: https://www.jishin.go.jp/main/chousa/18_yosokuchizu/yosokuchizu2018_chizu_5_1.pdf.

  4. The Sankei News on 10th September 2018 ‘Hokkaido earthquake with magnitude 7: Is there a new active fault near Atsuma-cho?’ [北海道震度7地震: 厚真町付近に新たな活断層が存在か]. Accessed on 4th July 2019: https://www.sankei.com/affairs/news/180910/afr1809100004-n1.html.

  5. As explained by Prof. Hirata of Earthquake Prediction Research Centre at Tokyo University, ‘as the research progressed, it became clear that the phenomena (precursor phenomena) that precede the earthquake occur in various ways, and sometimes they do not occur. Therefore, earthquake prediction is difficult’. This sentence is the translation of the first paragraph on the following website: https://www.nhk.or.jp/sonae/column/20140201.html; accessed on 8th Aug. 2020.

  6. Please refer to the English version of ‘Disaster Preparedness Tokyo’ [東京防災]:

    https://www.bousai.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/_res/projects/default_project/_page_/001/008/046/introduction.pdf; accessed on 9th Aug. 2020.

  7. The estimated population is 13,857,443 in January 2019, increased by 103,384 from January 2018; it indicated the 23rd consecutive year of population growth since 1997. Please refer to Population Estimation in Tokyo Metropolis [東京都の人口(推計)の概要]: https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/tosei/hodohappyo/press/2019/01/29/25.html; accessed on 9th Aug. 2020.

  8. Please refer to ‘Summary of the advantages and disadvantages of shaped land and non-shaped land’ [整形地と非整形地、その違いとメリット・デメリットのまとめと比較]: https://www.asaka-mytown.co.jp/column/95/; accessed on 10th Aug. 2020.

  9. As stated on USGS website, ‘Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future.’ Refer to: https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-you-predict-earthquakes?qt-news_science_products=0#qt-news_science_products.

  10. Datun Volcano, just located 15 km from the CBD of Taipei (i.e. Capital of Taiwan), is predicted to erupt within 10 thousand years; please refer to ‘The Academia Sinica team confirmed that Datun Volcano might erupt within ten thousand years’ [中研院團隊證實: 大屯山萬年內有噴發可能] https://news.pts.org.tw/article/485797.

  11. The Cabinet Office, Government of Japan [內閣府]: http://www.bousai.go.jp/kyoiku/hokenkyousai/jishin.html.

  12. The Japan Meteorological Agency: http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/index.html.

  13. In the discussion on the use of training and test data, James et al. (2013, p. 30) stated that ‘[s]uppose that we are interested in developing an algorithm to predict a stock’s price based on previous stock returns. We can train the method using stock returns from the past 6 months. But we don’t really care how well our method predicts last week’s stock price. We instead care about how well it will predict tomorrow’s price or next month’s price’.

  14. Jibannet Holdings Co. Ltd [地盤ネット株式会社], as an expertise company in foundation analysis in Japan, released the Relief Map of Foundation [地盤安心マップ], which offers online free evaluation of an individual property’s ground improvement ratio [改良工事率], flood risk [浸水リスク], earthquake shake risk [地震による揺れやすさ; it refers to the ease of shaking due to an earthquake], soil fluidization risk [液状化リスク] given the address of each property (or land).

  15. WDSU News (25th Aug 2015), ‘Prices of homes surge post-Katrina’: https://www.wdsu.com/article/prices-of-homes-surge-post-katrina-1/3379361.

  16. Please refer to the photo of ‘Flood depth record of Typhoon Nari in MRT Taipei Main Station’: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flood_depth_record_of_Typhoon_Nari,_MRT_Taipei_Main_Station_20170624.jpg.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Real Estate and Built Environment, National Taipei University, 151, University Rd., San Shia District, 23741, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Ti-Ching Peng

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Appendix

Appendix

 

Fig. 11
figure 11

Distribution of minimal depth of features in trees and its means: random forest regression on residential house prices

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Fig. 12
figure 12

Distribution of minimal depth of features in trees and its means: random forest regression on residential land prices

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Table 3 Feature importance in RF: mtry = 8 and mtry = 12
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Fig. 13
figure 13

OLS: Feature importance (residential house)

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Fig. 14
figure 14

OLS: Feature importance (land)

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Peng, TC. The effect of hazard shock and disclosure information on property and land prices: a machine-learning assessment in the case of Japan. Rev Reg Res 41, 1–32 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10037-020-00148-1

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