A Field Experiment on Discrimination Against Foreigners in the Rental Housing Market in Japan Examining The 23 Wards Of Tokyo

Discrimination against foreigners in rental housing markets has been recognized mainly in the U.S. and European countries. In Japan, the difficulties experienced by foreigners’ moving into rental housing have been reported only by media or government questionnaire surveys, but quantitative evidence is lacking. We conduct a correspondence study to observe discrimination against foreigners in rental housing markets in Tokyo’s 23wards during December 2019 and February 2020. Our results show that using a Chinese or Korean name decreases the probability of receiving affirmative responses to the desire to move into rental housing by approximately 13% compared with inquiries using Japanese names. In addition, we find that the COVID-19 crisis increased the discriminatory behaviors of rental housing owners and realtors.