The impact of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami on social capital in Japan: Trust before and after the disaster

We report empirical results related to trust and trustworthiness based on a representative web survey carried out in March 2011 in Japan. Although it initially was intended as a pilot, our survey is unique and unrepeatable because the massive Tohoku earthquake that hit Japan in spring 2011 occurred during the data-collection process and created a natural experiment. Apart from exploring changes originated by the disaster, the novelty of our approach lies in using a multipurpose questionnaire assembled by researchers with diverse interests from different academic areas that allows for exploring political and other social correlates of the economic concepts of trust and trustworthiness as measured by the game-theoretical trust game.