Abstract
For the purpose of embodying the community identity (CI) concept, we try to introduce five different methods, M1 to M5, i.e., the analytic hierarchy process (=M1), the fuzzy structural matrix model (=M2), the method utilizing a law of comparative judgment (=M3), the method of successive categories (=M4) and the method employing a law of categorical judgment (=M5), to give a community identifying element the quantitative weight which indicates the contribution degree of the element to clarify the CI idea. Using the psychological rating data derived from the surveys conducted in Nagano, those methods were tested to obtain weights for twenty-one elements. The test results revealed that 1) the weight values obtained by the above methods except M1 are highly correlated to each other with correlation coefficients lying in the interval between 0.943 and 0.996, 2)it can be said there are not much difference between weights derived from Ml and those from the remaining methods because of the correlation coefficients among them ranging from 0.782 to 0.932. Considering 1) and 2), it is concluded that M4 and M5 have advantage over the other methods because either methods require a simple survey of numerical rating for each element whereas the methods M1 through M3 need pairwise comparisons among elements which are exhausting for subjects.
