2015 Volume 11 Pages 2432-2443
Many of the rural areas in Japan, especially small islands, have suffered from depopulation and population ageing. These depopulation and population ageing have caused various problems. In the small islands, one of most important problems is a decrease in the number of the people who use passenger boat lines that connect between these islands and the mainland. The decrease in the users of these lines has made the lines fall into the verge of closing their services. Because of this, some of them are already given subsidy from the local governments, many of which have financial difficulties, in order to maintain their services. Validity of such a subsidy and an amount of it has to be investigated on the basis of contribution of the line to the areas and its economical valuation. The rapid passenger boat line connecting the Osaki-Kamijima Island and the mainland, which is the target of this study, has been in deficit and operated by being given the subsidy from the local government. In this study, economical valuation and contribution of this line to the island are analyzed on the basis of a questionnaire survey we carried out. From these results, validity of this subsidy to the line is examined.
