providing accurate information to consumers could be crucial in order to promote
better conservation of rural resources.
7.3 People’s Behavioral Intentions for Marine
Conservation
Marine ecosystem services include not only the production of fish as a food for urban
residents but also other services such as water purification and material cycling.
Furthermore, the ocean itself, including beaches, can be a venue for recreational
activities by urban residents. As for the conservation activities such as beach cleanups, many of them are conducted by rural residents. Creating measures to promote
participations of such conservation activities by urban residents would have potential
benefit in achieving good urban–rural partnerships.
A study was conducted to understand how to effectively develop policies that
enhance people’s behavioral intentions for marine conservation. Data for this study
were obtained from the responses of 814 individuals in Japan to a web-based
questionnaire drafted by the authors and distributed by Macromill. The distribution
of the questionnaire as well as the collection of responses took place in February
2013 based on a contract between the company and the University of Tokyo.
Representative areas were selected by taking into account geographical balance in
regard to the seas: Tokyo and Osaka are representative of metropolitan areas facing
bays; Shizuoka and Ishikawa are representative of largely rural prefectures facing
seas; and Nagano is representative of the country’s landlocked prefectures, reflecting
Japan’s ratio of coastal to landlocked prefectures. The targeted respondents were
20 years of age or above, and the questionnaire was sent to all people registered with
the research company who met the above-mentioned conditions.
The 18 questions were largely based on the four groupings of ecosystem services
in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2003), namely, provisioning services (P), regulating services (R), cultural services (C), and supporting services (S),
with each grouping comprised of three- to six-question items. An example from the
questionnaire for the provisioning service of food (P food ) is “Without foodstuffs like
fish and seaweed provided by the sea, our diet would be extremely affected.”
Respondents were asked to choose from a scale ranging from one to five about
their thoughts on the indispensability of the services targeted (Wakita et al. 2014).
This five-point Likert-type scale was had the following values: (1) strongly agree,
(2) agree, (3) neither, (4) disagree, and (5) strongly disagree.
Underlying factors of marine ecosystem services were identified by conducting a
factor analysis using Promax with Kaiser normalization. Principal component analysis was used as the extracting method with the variables related to indispensability
of marine ecosystem services (Ibid.). As a result, three factors regarding marine
ecosystem services, as perceived by randomly selected Japanese residents, were
identified through the factor analysis, namely, “essential benefits,” “indirect
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N. Yagi and K. Wakita
better conservation of rural resources.
7.3 People’s Behavioral Intentions for Marine
Conservation
Marine ecosystem services include not only the production of fish as a food for urban
residents but also other services such as water purification and material cycling.
Furthermore, the ocean itself, including beaches, can be a venue for recreational
activities by urban residents. As for the conservation activities such as beach cleanups, many of them are conducted by rural residents. Creating measures to promote
participations of such conservation activities by urban residents would have potential
benefit in achieving good urban–rural partnerships.
A study was conducted to understand how to effectively develop policies that
enhance people’s behavioral intentions for marine conservation. Data for this study
were obtained from the responses of 814 individuals in Japan to a web-based
questionnaire drafted by the authors and distributed by Macromill. The distribution
of the questionnaire as well as the collection of responses took place in February
2013 based on a contract between the company and the University of Tokyo.
Representative areas were selected by taking into account geographical balance in
regard to the seas: Tokyo and Osaka are representative of metropolitan areas facing
bays; Shizuoka and Ishikawa are representative of largely rural prefectures facing
seas; and Nagano is representative of the country’s landlocked prefectures, reflecting
Japan’s ratio of coastal to landlocked prefectures. The targeted respondents were
20 years of age or above, and the questionnaire was sent to all people registered with
the research company who met the above-mentioned conditions.
The 18 questions were largely based on the four groupings of ecosystem services
in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2003), namely, provisioning services (P), regulating services (R), cultural services (C), and supporting services (S),
with each grouping comprised of three- to six-question items. An example from the
questionnaire for the provisioning service of food (P food ) is “Without foodstuffs like
fish and seaweed provided by the sea, our diet would be extremely affected.”
Respondents were asked to choose from a scale ranging from one to five about
their thoughts on the indispensability of the services targeted (Wakita et al. 2014).
This five-point Likert-type scale was had the following values: (1) strongly agree,
(2) agree, (3) neither, (4) disagree, and (5) strongly disagree.
Underlying factors of marine ecosystem services were identified by conducting a
factor analysis using Promax with Kaiser normalization. Principal component analysis was used as the extracting method with the variables related to indispensability
of marine ecosystem services (Ibid.). As a result, three factors regarding marine
ecosystem services, as perceived by randomly selected Japanese residents, were
identified through the factor analysis, namely, “essential benefits,” “indirect
130
N. Yagi and K. Wakita