National disasters engage safety fears and desires to help citizens in need. This article aims to explore that mechanism and extend the literature on consumer reactions to national disasters by studying the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan. On March 11, 2011, north-east Japan was struck by a massive earthquake and a devastating tsunami. Besides causing the loss of thousands of lives, Japan's worst post-war natural disaster damaged the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and thus sparked the second-largest nuclear accident in world history. In the ensuing months, the damaged power plant released large amounts of radioactive material which found its way into the local agriculture, a major food supplier for eastern Japan and the Tokyo metropolitan area. This is a long-term problem because the decay of radioactive substances takes decades.
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