Current community activity

The objective of the second study is applying the neural imaging experiment designing a social activity in the same community of study I investigating the motivation and satisfaction of the local resident’s participants. From this method, the second subsidiary research question, how to improve the motivation of the elderly to get involved into community-based service will be answered combining the study I data result. The third subsidiary research question, how to apply the prosocial behavior antecedents and consequences into community-based service for serving the elderly will be answered from the process design of the community activity.

In this section, the study start from the summary of the previous community meetings of the local activity that could be further improved in this community and there current problems about this community activity. From the results of study I, searching some characteristics summarized and applied into the study II. The implication not only aiming to solve the problem in the current community activity but listing some potential application into the community-based service design.

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4.1.1 Community activity in Nomi city

According to the social survey results about local action, social movement and citizen and administrative collaboration conducted by Nomi city in 2015, the social participation of local community activity increased 6%. From gender comparison, male group has more participants than female group, from that point that the roles of male citizen get involved into the community activity and social services should be focused. From the age aspect, although the middle aged community clubs are very popular and most of citizens have involved into the community activities in this age level (30-50). Moreover, the involvement of volunteer activity or other related prosocial social activities, people aged over 60 is significantly higher than other groups.¹⁰ From the three communities (Neagari, Terai, Tatsunokuchi) of Nomi city comparison, Terai has the average level is every aspect concerns community activities and the citizen coordinator’s activity is not enough.

Looked into the Terai community activity, there are prosperous history about Kutani, which is the key assets in Terai community, has held the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme activity¹¹. It is the chance to introduce the community to more foreigners about the place. From the series of community like festival of Kutani products, some local wound straight forum in Nomi¹², we could notice that all of the community activities have a key points which is solving the local community problems and spread the spirit or the cultural background to more people.

In Every year Terai community meeting, they will discuss the current issues in the community and provide some potential solution to the issues. The latest committee meeting mentioned four teams that holding the community activities. Comparing other teams, Team for social connection and activation of local community has proposed their issues including the target identification, insufficient process and the unclear activity plan. Those issues caused their strolling activity hasn’t received a good feedback.

10 Nomi city, 2015, Nomi citizen satisfaction report section 8, Local action, social movement and citizen and administrative collaboration, last access on Jan.1^st, 2017, http://www.city.nomi.ishikawa.jp/data/open/cnt/3/5258/1/7_tiikikatudou.pdf

11 Ishikawa JET Resource, last access, Jan 1^st, 2017, http://ishikawajet.wikia.com/wiki/Nomi

12 Nomi city, 2016, last access, Jan 1^st, 2017,

http://www.city.nomi.ishikawa.jp.e.bg.hp.transer.com/chiiki/collaborative_community_development/machizukuri.html

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4.1.2 Data implication

Considering those issues, from study I there are several prosocial behavior characteristics that could apply to sort the problems in the current Terai community activity issues. The prosocial behavior characteristics that concluded from study I are helping behavior that help the elderly release the physical burden, sharing behavior that people have a same goal and working together for the goal, informing behavior that expressing the thank or caring feelings, offering robot’s help and providing souvenirs instead of money reward to the elderly people. All of those characteristics received good impression or feedback from the elderly with the investigation of asking them as service receiver or service provider.

Considering the Terai strolling activity is a long-term plan. It is planned start from 2015 and complete by 2019, in the long strategy setting process, there are a potential to apply the theories from study I. First of all, the target issue, Terai community has confused about how to set the strolling activity target, the community committee has mentioned to target at the foreigner tourist. Although the JET has used to apply Terai Kutani village as the tourist place and the participants said that they enjoyed making Kutani products, targeting at foreigner tourist is not the best way to keep the community service for a long run. Every tourism has differences regarding to the seasons, climate or temperature (Amelung & Viner, 2006), strolling activity is not a variety activity in community-served activity. This restriction limited the sustainable development of community service. On the contrary, the local residents are living in this community and all of them are contributed into the construction of this community, which meant a lot for the whole community. Therefore, target the strolling activity in a long-term strategy, target at the local residents will be better.

Secondly, currently Terai community has held some strolling activity or related activities, such as inviting the high school students to draw pictures about the local buildings.

Those activities have provided some materials for the community strolling activity design.

The community committee and Nomi City Planning Division have proposed mapping for the strolling activity. Some plans such as finding Kutani-related assets. The original activity map as Figure 4.1 presented.

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Figure 4.1: Original map for the strolling activity

This map demonstrated the route is formed into a circle. Following the circle people could walk through all of the places worth to visit. At the right side lists the name of all the places or assets. While the map is suitable for people who can read Japanese. Which is the biggest problem for applying to the foreigners. At this point, the map is also more suitable for the local residents. Therefore, since the local residents already familiar with the assets and places, how to improve their interest into the community strolling activity clearly become a point need to be tackled. Regarding our study I data, sharing behavior characteristic, letting people having a same goal in one activity and letting them to work together through a teamwork is a good way to improve people psychological wellbeing. Not only feeling the enjoyment but also sensing the accomplishment from the activity.

Thirdly, the Terai community used to applied this map and had a strolling activity before, they has aiming to name the route as walking for strengthen the people’s health.

However, personality caused people has different perception to the strolling event. Besides that people’s perception is difficult to keep a same average level, which caused the difficulty to the organizers to summarize the process detail problem and the gap of participant’s satisfaction with the organizer’s intention. The data from study I has interpreted by the

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average perception of same community members. Study I also interpreted the data based on the personality identification questions, such as you would like to communicate with other people, you always have a specific goal to working or doing something. Therefore, applying the data in the first study, the community activity need to clarify the process and all of the details in the activity to make sure the participants could be perceive same understanding and achieve the goal that the organizer planned.

As conclusion for this part, study II need to focus these three aspects to implicate study I data set. From the general viewpoint, the community activity require to target at the local residents. Mainly focusing on the elderly people combining with the multiple generation communication to keep the variety of the process. Regarding the process viewpoint, clarify the activity goal and let the participants also well-known the goal and process of the activity supposed to be done at the beginning of the activity. From the activity details, three aspects of prosocial behavior, helping, sharing and informing need to be designed into the community-based activity and service.

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