ARIMA Masahiro, KAWAMUKAI Hajime
Studies in Regional Science, 37(4) 931-946, 2008
Questionnaire surveying has been one of the main means for surfacing the needs of local residents by the local government or community and these survey results have been utilized to make policies in almost all local governments in Japan. In this study, based on a questionnaire survey conducted in Shingu Town, Hyogo prefecture in 2004, we found questions that ask satisfaction and importance level of 55 living environment items by means of ordinal scale tend to overestimate residents' needs. This is because of external effects from local public facilities and services such as option values and prestige values. Therefore we propose the introduction of quantification methods such as CVM (Contingent Valuation Method), AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and Conjoint Analysis to determine the local issues and create a local community that is effectively managed.<br> Particularly, we examined the applicability of an extended version of AHP named “Relative Position Measurement Approach” which has been proposed by A. Mori, S. Suzuki, K. Suzuki and H. Igarashi. To do this, firstly, we designed a question asking local residents for marking relative importance of 6 different living environment fields such as social infrastructure, health and welfare, education and culture, and public participation on a 0 to 10 cardinal scale. Then answers from 680 respondents out of 4,860 households in Shingu Town were processed through AHP weighting process to calculate importance weights for 6 living environment fields. Finally, statistical analysis such as multiple regression analysis and correlation analysis were applied to compare the relationship between estimated importance weights over 6 living environment fields calculated by applying AHP and importance levels evaluated over 55 living environment items which are grouped into 6 upper rank living environment fields. The results strongly supported our hypothesis that each importance evaluation on ordinal scale overestimates the real needs for local public facilities and services. Furthermore, a question that value of calculated weights might be affected by the structure of evaluation items or attributes hierarchy is raised.<br> As a further extension of this study, we discuss the viability of a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) based feedback system to provide questionnaire results to local residents.<br><br>JEL Classification: C35, R22, R58