Abstract
Recently, Japanese agricultural and rural development projects initiated by national and local governments have increasingly begun to rely on collective participation by the community to be successful. We attempted to identify the characteristics of rural residents that enhance a project’s performance. We focused on residents’personal experiences of engaging in crime prevention, working with NPOs, participating in environmental conservation, etc. We determined that such experiences are likely to enhance a project’s performance. The experiences of working with NPOs and participating in community meetings significantly influenced the performance of projects, as they allowed residents to evaluate projects.
