抄録
Since its start in 2008, Furusato Nozei Seido, or hometown tax donation program, has expanded its size. Many existing papers focus on the program’s history, mechanism and “unhealthy” competitions among local governments. Little attention has been given to how the donations are used. In this study, the data for the program in 2018 were used to calculate policy project priority scores of local governments in allocating newly funded money. The results showed that the most prioritized project was child care, followed by education. Tourism was in the fourth place. The priority scores were also used to calculate correlations with official tourism and natural disaster data. The tourism scores and tourism data showed weak negative correlations, suggesting that local governments with lesser tourists used the fund from the program to promote tourism. The resilience scores and disaster damage data showed positive moderate correlations, suggesting that local governments with large damage utilized the fund from the program for recovery and future prevention of the disaster. Hometown tax donation program is a part of regional revitalization strategy, which set job creation as one of the most important objectives. The local governments are advised to use the fund more on tourism, one of the most promising growing industries.
