著者

阪口 祐介

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

桃山学院大学社会学論集 (ISSN:02876647)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.2, pp.47-68, 2016-02

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Since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, the negative opinion to nuclear power plant has increased and the political debates over the pros and cons of nuclear energy has been activated. This paper attempts to reveal empirically the social determinants of attitudes towards nuclear energy. We focus on generation, gender, and social stratification as the determinants, and examine for the value mediated mechanism. Previous researches have indicated that women tend to have negative opinion to nuclear power and young people tend to have positive opinion to that. In this paper, we assume that these gender and generation differences are mediated by the values. For example, it is expected that women tend to be egalitarian, and egalitarian tends to have negative opinion to nuclear power. In order to examine the value mediated mechanism concerning generation, gender, and social stratification, we do analysis by using structural equation modeling. The data is "The Public Opinion Survey on Internationalization and Political Participation of Citizens" that was conducted in November 2013 by the nationwide sampling mail survey. The findings reveal that the political distrust and the egalitarianism had a strong influence on the antinuclear orientation. Concerning the value mediated mechanism, we found out that the gender difference was mediated by the political distrust and the egalitarianism. This results means that women tend to be political distrust and egalitarianism, for that reason they tend to have the antinuclear orientation. We also found out that the generation difference was mediated by the political apathy. Concerning social stratification, high income people tend to be antiegalitarianism and for that reason they tend to support for the nuclear power.