Keywords

1 Introduction

It is known that one or more dedicated people with strong leadership skills typically participate in successful community activities. These endeavors in various communities are often unsuccessful when the enthusiasm of the leaders and the residents toward the activities are not aligned.

This paper examines two hypotheses: “community non-profit organization (NPO) members actively show willingness to contribute to the private provisioning of local public goods” and “there is a difference in time spent in the region between the group of community NPO members who chose to actively show their willingness to contribute to the private provisioning of local public goods, and the group of members who do not.” With the cooperation of an NPO actually working on community activities in a community, preferences regarding monetary cooperation toward public transportation services by the NPO members and the community residents, along with the GPS data of the NPO members, were obtained to examine these two hypotheses. From these data, willingness to pay for public transportation by the residents and the community NPO members were estimated using the contingent value method (CVM). Comparison of the estimation results revealed that the residents who are considering using the services themselves in the future showed more willingness to pay. No difference was observed in willingness to pay among the NPO members as driven by an “ultra-altruistic motivation.” The GPS data of the individual NPO members were visualized on a map during the investigation period to derive the time spent in the region. Section 2 below reviews prior studies, and Sect. 3 describes the data used in this paper. Section 4 shows the method, and Sect. 5 provides the analysis results, and Sect. 6 gives a summary of the present study and future themes.

2 Prior Studies

A situation in which socially cooperative action is more desirable, but not offered, is called a social dilemma. In economics, such situations are defined such that the Pareto-inefficient solution is the dominant strategy and is analyzed using game theory. Using this theory, Axelrod explained that people choose a tit-for-tat strategy in social relationships [2].

In terms of community activities, Diekmann revealed that they will be successful if there are one or more selfless, willing leaders, but will fail without active participation [3]. Diekmann called this situation the volunteer’s dilemma. Many studies have been conducted regarding this dilemma. Archetti and Sheuring pointed out that the larger the group is, the smaller the benefit per member [1]; therefore, the incentive for volunteerism will be reduced. A series of study results by Fujii et al. are also well known in Japan. They state that fostering the awareness that one’s participation will lead to better problem-solving will make the volunteerism more active.

Hatori et al. explained that a person who selflessly promotes community projects, even singlehandedly, is driven by an “ultra-altruistic motivation,” and these researchers quantitatively analyzed cases in which the existence of an ultra-altruistically motivated individual led to successful tourism projects [5].

Is “ultra-altruistic motivation” a subjective motivation? Shiozu et al. asked the name of the individual whom the community NPO members regarded as their leader [7]. With this result and through a social network analysis, based on the data collected through actual email correspondences and conversations, they derived the information sender (authority). Thus, the leader of the community activities can be determined through the recognition of others and actual communication.

A sociopsychological factor for individuals to participate in community activities is not necessarily altruistic motivation alone. Yamada and Hashimoto analyzed the subjective norm and self-efficacy by incorporating them into an agent-based model simulation [8]. The results of this analysis revealed that improved self-efficacy enhances the subjective norm and will lead to other people around the participants taking part in the community activities.

One community activity is the maintenance of public transportation. In traffic economics, Weisbrod defined a concept called an option value [9]. An option value describes one deeming the continuance of public transportation as being valuable, despite not using it currently, because one may use it in the future.

Participation in such community activities is said to be influenced by place attachment. Many studies have analyzed place attachment behaviors. In Scannell and Gifford, it is shown that plce attachment increases by environmental factors than the number of years of residence [6].

3 Overview of Area Investigation

An investigation was conducted in the Makishima area of Uji City, Kyoto Prefecture, which is located near one of three major metropolises in Japan. The population of the area is 15,223 as of January 2017, slightly greater than the previous year. Figure 1 shows a map of Uji City. The Makishima area is located on a plain in the northwest part of the city. Its geographical features make it easy to travel on foot or by bicycle. Two private railroads operate through the area. Buses serve in north–south directions, but there are no services available in the east–west directions.

Fig. 1.
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Map of Uji city

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Currently, many residents are able to travel by car, bicycle, or on foot, but some older residents would prefer a bus service. To that end, they are trying to revive the once discontinued bus routes, but this has not been realized.

3.1 Data Overview

With cooperation of the Makishima Kizuna Association of non-profit organizations (Community NPO), GPS data were collected from smart phones between January 1 to June 30, 2017 and used in this study (GPS investigation). Prior to its implementation, this investigation was ethically examined at Doshisha University, and the test subjects were informed that they could refuse to provide their data at any time.

A survey was conducted between October 15 and November 15, 2016 on 1,400 residents and 30 Community NPO members who consented to cooperate with the investigation. The survey asked the intention of the participants to pay for the cost of bus services and their reasons.

3.2 Activity Status Within the Region

The data obtained through the GPS investigation were sampled according to the following procedure to visualize the activity status within the region. First, individuals who have GPS data and responded to the survey were selected, and only acceleration data were extracted from the individual data. This can eliminate instances in which their smart phones were left at home or where the data were intentionally not provided. Next, to understand the activity status within the region, the data were further filtered by specifying the area based on the latitude and longitude corresponding to the applicable region. Of these narrowed data, those in which the GPS data were continuously obtained within a 15 min period were totaled by the individuals. These are visualized on the map as shown in Fig. 2. We use R Ver.3.4.2 for visualization.

Fig. 2.
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Visualized “Time” data on map

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This is defined as the time spent in the region and labeled as “Time” in Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics
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Table 2. Descriptive statistics of NPO members
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3.3 Participation in Community Activities and Willingness to Pay

The survey items inquired about the preference regarding paying annually if an annual payment was introduced for the bus services and the reason for their choice, as well as the preferred fare if bus services were offered without membership and the reason for their choice. There were 212 valid survey responses from the residents. Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics.

“PAYMENT” represents the willingness of the respondents to pay for the First Bid Price of the annual payment (1500 yen), and “FARE” represents their willingness to pay the First Bid Price of a single fare (200 yen). They chose 1 if they support the bid price and 2 if they opposed. The values 1 and 2 in “SEX” indicate male and female, respectively. “YOUNG” represents the number of children under 18, and “ELDER” indicates the number of seniors 65 years and older.

There were 20 valid respondents in the survey from the Community NPO members. The descriptive statistics are as shown in Table 2. Time refers to the time spent in the region derived from the procedure described in 3.2.

4 Measurement Method

The CVM is used to statistically estimate the willingness of the market, as a whole, to pay by hypothetically estimating the market based on a survey. This method has been developed to measure the economic value of goods and services not traded on the market, such as the envonment.

There are two main techniques for measuring economic values. One is for an investigator to present the test subjects with a scenario, and the subjects indicate the amount they would pay. The other is for the investigator to present the payment amount, and the test subjects show their willingness by agreeing or disagreeing to the amount. Because actual payment is not requested in either technique, the former technique in particular, is known to result in an over estimation, and thus, the latter technique has been more frequently used in recent studies.

In the latter technique, a method exists in which willingness is asked by presenting a second bid price higher (or lower) than the initial bid price, after the preference to the first bid price is made. This is called a multistep method. A type of multistep method in which the bid prices are presented twice is called a double bound method. This method allows a statistically valid estimation with fewer samples than that required in a single bound method (see Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Double bound method for CVM

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A method that does not presume a normal distribution of the data obtained is called a nonparametric method, and a method that does make such a presumption is called a parametric method.

In transportation engineering and transport economics, the use of the CVM as a support to measure the option value is advocated.

This paper also estimates the willingness of the residents and community NPO members to pay for public transportation using a double bound method. Refer to [4] for details of these estimation methods.

5 Estimation Results

5.1 Interest in Community Activity and Willingness to Pay

The willingness of the residents and the Community NPO members to pay for public transportation is shown in Table 3. All results are statistically significant when the p value is 0.001 or 0.000. The mean values are the maximum bid prices, and all lower values have been excluded.

Table 3. Willingness to pay for community bus service between NPO and residents
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The NPO members are willing to pay the highest annual payment, approximately 1.8 times that of the residents’ median value. It is also notable that the NPO members’ willingness to pay is higher than the First Bid Price.

The NPO members also showed a higher willingness to pay the individual fare than the residents, but this amount was merely 1.04 times higher for the median value. The amount both groups were willing to pay exceeded the First Bid Price in both median and mean values.

Because the individual acknowledged as the leader by the NPO members and the Authority derived by Shiozu et al. were identical, the data on this individual were extracted, and the motivation to pay for the public transportation service was examined in the next step. As the result, the choices of the leader represented an altruistic motivation, and this individual is therefore deemed to have an “ultra-altruistic motivation.”

The willingness to pay of the NPO members excluding this “ultra-altruistic motivated” individual was estimated as shown in Table 4.

Table 4. Willingness to pay for community bus services of NPO members excluding the leader
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Compared to Table 3, the values for annual payment and single fare payment are both higher than those by the residents. The willingness to pay for the single fare does not seem to be influenced by the existence of the leader. The willingness to pay the annual payment shows little difference, with a maximum difference of 56 yen.

5.2 Willingness to Pay and Place Attachment

Place attachment has been shown to be influenced by the environment in prior studies, rather than by the number of years of residency. Even is one’s residence is in the region, if one’s work or school is in another, the amount of time spent in the first region is smaller. In other words, if one spends less time in a region, it is possible to assume that one’s interest in the region is less. On the other hand, traveling within the region may increase interest in regional issues, such as public transportation and road improvement. Thus, the time spent in the region is defined as an environmental factor in this paper.

The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to examine whether the time spent in the region differed by the groups that supported and opposed the First Bid Price of the annual payment. The results are shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Kruskal-Wallis test for payment
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Considering the p-value of 0.2100, it can be said that there is no statistical difference between the preference of the First Bid Price and the time spent in the region.

Similarly, the group supporting the First Bid Price and the group opposed were examined using a Kruskal-Wallis test to determine the difference in their amount of time spent in the region. The results are shown in Table 6.

Table 6. Kruskal-Wallis test for fare
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Considering the p-value of 0.1248, it can be said that there is no statistical difference between the preference of the First Bid Price and the time spent in the region.

6 Summary and Future Themes

This paper examined two hypotheses: “Community NPO members actively show willingness to contribute to the private provisioning of local public goods” and “there is a difference in the amount of time spent in the region between the group of community NPO members who chose to actively show willingness to contribute to the private provisioning of local public goods and the group of members who do not.”

For the first hypothesis, it was verified that the NPO members try to actively contribute because the NPO members’ willingness to pay is higher than that of the residents. However, this was not determined to be driven by an “ultra-altruistic motivation.”

Testing of the second hypothesis revealed that the preference on monetary cooperation toward public transportation was not related to the time spent in the region. It was found that the preferences of the community NPO members were chosen regardless of the time spent in the region, whether monetary payment was required, and whether they have an interest in the region.

There have been cases in real community activities in which local public goods cannot be maintained without a monetary contribution by the residents. A mechanism that inspires more residents to become interested in community activities and promotes their participation, including monetary contributions, is needed.

The handling of GPS data was not examined closely in this analysis. A thorough investigation of the GPS data and a statistical examination are topics of future studies.