increased after the decision, indicating that forcing people tomake a difficult
decision regarding, for example, dependency on nuclear power
generation and electricity rates, causes their post-choice preference
change to resolve their psychological conflict. Therefore, they may
adopt a harsher line as a result of their preference change caused by
their own choices. Second, investigating the willingness to pay (WTP)
for electricity, given a 1% decrease in the nuclear power generation
ratio, we see that the WTP value increases by 20.5%, and the no-choice
option improves the consumer surplus by 11.2%. Third, regressing individual
characteristics on the variables related to cognitive dissonance
and the no-choice option, we see that gender and household income
are statistically significant predictors in both models. That is to say, female
and low-income households tend to fall into cognitive dissonance
and choose the no-choice option.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains
the theoretical framework and hypothesis of the current study.
Section 3 provides the preliminary survey results. Section 4 investigates
the preference survey on cognitive dissonance and discusses the results.
Section 5 elucidates the preference for the no-choice option. Section 6
discusses the relationship of individual characteristics with cognitive
dissonance and the no-choice option. Section 7 provides the concluding
remarks.