A Senior Capstone Experience by Faye Dorman ’26

Submitted to the Department of Economics and Communications & Media Studies

Advised by Dr. Meghan Grosse & Dr. Rocio Suárez

Contributor Biography: Faye Dorman graduated with honors from Washington College with a B.A. in Communications and Media Studies and Economics, and was awarded the Communications and Media Studies Outstanding Scholar Award, and the McCall Prize in International Economics. During her time at WC, she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Epsilon, and Sigma Tua Delta. She also worked as a staff writer for The Elm, social media intern for the Rose O’Neill Literary House, and as one of the Hollingsworth Tutors at the Quantitative Skills center. Dorman is currently looking to further her education by pursuing a masters in Economics.

Short Description: In an era where companies are incentivized to sell consumers ideas rather than concrete goods, it’s important for consumers to understand the concept of perceived benefit. To demonstrate the impact of perceived benefit, this SCE uses nuclear energy (NE) production in Japan, a country that faced the worst nuclear accident of the century in 2011, to examine if there was a direct positive economic impact of NE production to consumers. In the absence of direct economic impact, marketing and public relations campaigns used perceived benefits to increase positive public opinion of Japanese NE production, a product that Japan had been adamantly against just a decade prior.

Read Faye’s SCE below:

Photo credit: https://toshiba.com/taes/nuclear-power-solutions