Why a Manga-Predicted Earthquake Scared Tourists and What It Reveals About Climate and Risk Communication

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In July, a manga artist’s fictional earthquake prediction spooked travellers across Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, leading to a sharp drop in holiday bookings to Japan.

Efforts by Japanese officials and seismologists to convince tourists that such predictions are impossible were in vain. Evidenced by a 50% booking drop year on year and low-cost airlines such as Greater Bay Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines completely cancelling routes to several Japanese destinations. Although July figures have yet to be released and may yet prove more striking, it is difficult to find other viable explanations to the abrupt 70% slowdown in June arrival growth rate in arguably the hottest tourist destination in the world^[1]. This begs the question as to why fiction sometimes feels more convincing than fact?

How can behavioural and decsion science help us understand the public's response to fiction-based earthquake predictions?

Part of the explanation lies in how our minds process risk.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman famously described two ways of thinking: System 1 and 2, leveraging the dual process theory popular in the social sciences. System 1 represents our quick, intuitive and emotional reactions, while System 2 refers to slower, analytical and evidence-based reasoning^[2].

Most decision-making relies on quick System 1, with effortful System 2 coming in during high-stakes decision moments. Cognitive shortcuts or heuristics, facilitate the fast decision-making possible in System 1. They are the product of evolutionary wiring designed to help people navigate uncertainty and threat, where speedy decision-making was a key ingredient for survival.

Why do compelling stories grab our attention?

The prevalence of fast System 1 thinking helps explain why fears frequently influence our decisions. For instance, why many people fear flying despite its statistically proven safety, or why crowds rushed to stockpile toilet paper during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In System 1 especially, emotions carry more weight than statistics. This 'affect heuristic' means we instinctively judge risks based on immediate feelings like fear or dread^[3,4]. Vivid imagery found in manga or dramatic news stories tends to stick in our minds, often overshadowing dry scientific explanations.

Why we hold on to beliefs even in the face of contradictory information

Additionally, once an emotionally stirring narrative takes hold, people tend not to update their beliefs even in the face of new information – a phenomenon influenced by motivated reasoning and cognitive dissonance^[5,6].

Motivated reasoning leads individuals to selectively accept information that aligns with their existing beliefs, ignoring information that contradicts their existing beliefs. Furthermore, cognitive dissonance, the discomfort felt from conflicting ideas, often makes changing minds difficult. A notable example is the widespread misconception conflating climate change with general pollution or ozone depletion, although climate-change scientists among others have advocated for a nuanced distinction.

Making sense of risk information: A challenge for experts and lay people alike

In addition to disaster and climate change communication often relying on slow, deliberate processing, another practical challenge lies in interpreting probabilities, uncertainties, or technical terms like "return periods", common in hazard and risk assessments^[5,6,7]. Even experts may not consistently interpret risk information, for example, underwriters asked to underwrite a 1 in 100-year damaging hail zone rated the risk differently when framed as a 39% chance of being impacted by damaging hail in the next 50 years, although both descriptions are equivalent.

Traditional risk communication often falls short because it assumes that people simply lack information. Hence, scientists might communicate risks by leveraging tools like hazard maps or probabilistic risk models. But, as these are centred in System 2 logic, their impact is limited in the face of more compelling, System 1-friendly, narratives.

Scientists may also misjudge public knowledge of relevant concepts and over-rely on jargon, missing opportunities to explain uncertainty in relatable ways. Indeed, research consistently shows that providing information alone rarely changes public behavior^[5,6].

Could the obstacle be the path?

Yet, System 1 thinking is not just an obstacle, it can also be a way forward. Successful risk communication increasingly leverages narratives, emotional storytelling and analogies to vividly illustrate risks.

Public health campaigns around the COVID-19 pandemic, and other crises have shown how emotional narratives can motivate action^[7]. In effect, this means scientists must also speak to System 1, tapping into intuition and emotion to connect with audiences.

For this to work, scientists must learn from storytellers to translate risk tools and insights into emotionally resonant messages that the public can understand, relate to, and act upon.

Yet fear-mongering communication tactics must not be the answer. Scientists must continue to communicate to be understood, rather than leverage emotive storytelling to manipulate. This means scientists must consider ethics at the heart of all their communication efforts.

In addition to speaking to the public's fast and emotive cognitive processing, another approach emphasises risk education, allowing the public to better interrogate risk information. Especially early education in risk literacy, which includes statistical thinking, rules of thumb and the psychology of risks, can help the public effectively make sense of an uncertain world^[7].

Can disaster communication hold lessons for climate risk communication?

While the manga-inspired earthquake panic highlights the public’s susceptibility to emotive storytelling over statistical facts, the stakes become far more consequential when we turn to climate risk communication, an existential challenge compounded by temporal distance, uncertainty and trust gaps.

Risks viewed by the public to be in the distant future remain uncertain and abstract hazards that lead to inertia – a tendency to maintain things as they are^[11]. Furthermore, the public's trust in climate risk communication is flagging.

A recent survey of nearly 70,000 respondents across 68 countries found that climate scientists are on average less trusted than scientists generally, with especially pronounced ideological divides in North America, Australia and parts of Europe^[9]. This trust gap shows that even well-intentioned expert messaging may fail to persuade audiences with deeply held beliefs or identities.

Three takeaways for improving disaster and climate risk messaging

1. Make it real: Emotional resonance and narrative framing often penetrate where dry statistics do not. Thus, we recommend that actuaries and scientists pair System 2 content with a System 1 friendly delivery. This means turning climate models into compelling stories, simplifying probabilistic statements into everyday analogies (e.g. “your lifetime chance”), and building narratives that connect global risks to personal stakes, much like a manga conveys danger through imagery. Hence, actuaries and scientists might use reframes that shift perception from distant probabilities to more immediate relevance ^[11], and "an 18% chance over 20 years" might replace the vague notion of "1-in-100-year" extremes.
2. Consider who delivers the messages: Secondly, trusted messengers and credibility cues are essential. Audiences skeptical of climate and disaster scientists may respond better to local leaders, community figures, influencers or messengers whose identity aligns with their group values ^[11].
3. Work with social and identity effects: Finally, it’s important to acknowledge that risk communication is only part of the solution.

Risk literacy, deep-seated worldviews, group identities and social norms further influence how people receive information. Even the best-crafted messages will not shape disaster and climate risk readiness without a focus on public risk education, and initiatives that build trust through early and sustained engagement that attunes to cultural nuances ^[7,11].

In the end

The manga panic offers a lesson worth remembering. While actuaries and scientists may be surprised at the public's reaction, it illuminates crucial insights into human ways of thinking and decision-making.

If actuaries and scientists stopped dismissing these natural instincts and started working with them, they can do a much better job helping people make more informed, science-based decisions, whether about earthquakes, pandemics, or the crisis of climate change.

References

^[1] Tatsuki, R. (2021). 私が見た未来完全版[The future I saw: Complete edition], JTB Tourism Research and Consulting (https://www.tourism.jp/en/tourism-database/stats/ ), https:// www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/manga-doomsday-prediction-spooks-tourists-japan- 2025-07-03/

^[2] Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

^[3] Bostrom, A., Böhm, G., Hayes, A. L., & O’Connor, R. E. (2020). Credible threat: Perceptions of pandemic coronavirus, climate change and the morality and management of global risks. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 578562. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.578562

^[4] Ahn, A. Y. E., Takikawa, H., Maly, E., Bostrom, A., Kuriyama, S., Matsubara, H., Izumi, T., Torayashiki, T., & Imamura, F. (2021). Perception of earthquake risks and disaster prevention awareness: A comparison of resident surveys in Sendai, Japan and Seattle, WA, USA. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 66, Article 102624. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102624

^[5] Fleming, W., Hayes, A. L., Crosman, K. M., & Bostrom, A. (2021). Indiscriminate, irrelevant, and sometimes wrong: Causal misconceptions about climate change. Risk Analysis, 41(1), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13587

^[6] Crosman, K. M., Bostrom, A., & Hayes, A. L. (2019). Efficacy foundations for risk communication: How people think about reducing the risks of climate change. Risk Analysis, 39(10), 2329–2347. https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13334

^[7] Gigerenzer, G. (2014). Risk Savvy How to Make Good Decisions. Viking , Adetola AM, The Power of Storytelling and Narrative Persuasion in Promoting COVID-19 Vaccination, University of Nevada, 2025

^[8] Pui and Feddersen, So you think you can underwrite, Research and Analysis, Actuaries Institute (2022)

^[9] Ghasemi, O., Cologna, V., Mede, N. G., Stanley, S. K., Strahm, N., Ross, R., … Schäfer, M. S. (2025). Gaps in public trust between scientists and climate scientists: a 68-country study. Environmental Research Letters, 20(6), Article 061002. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748 -9326/add1f9

^[10] Myhre, G., Hodnebrog, Ø., Loeb, N., & Forster, P. M. (2025). Observed trend in Earth energy imbalance may provide a constraint for low climate sensitivity models. Science, 380(6651), 1210–1213. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt0647

^[11] Pui, A. (2020). Wilful Blindness: How to debias perceptions and address climate risk now. Swiss Re Corporate Solutions. https://corporatesolutions.swissre.com/insights/knowledge/wilful-blindness.html