Do You Want Sustainable Olympics? Environment, Disaster, Gender, and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

The slogans of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were “symbol of resilience from the Great East Japan Earthquake” and “Compact Olympics”. The Olympics were also expected to demonstrate “gender equality” and to enhance sustainability in modern society. However, in practice, the cost of the Tokyo Olympics 2020 was far greater than estimated. The slogan was changed to “symbol of overcoming COVID-19” although in reality, infection spread dramatically during the games. Overall, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics did not turn out as expected or meet the expectations of the populace. Using individual-level data, we tested how and to what extent Japanese proponents of a sustainable society supported the compact Olympics announced in 2016. The key findings are: (1) most people support policies for environmental protection, gender equality, and disaster prevention and (2) they would have wished to reduce public expenditure for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Further examination with a questionnaire yielded similar results for the male but not for the female sample.