2001 年 3 巻 p. 36-50
The significance of pluriactivity is increasingly recognized in industrialized countries.The growing significance of rural policy in these countries requires clarification of the new roles of pluriactive farms in connection with the multifunctionality of agriculture and rural areas. This has drawn attention recently. However, until recently little was known about what contribution pluriactive farms have made to land preservation, which has been pointed out as one factor of multifunctionality. Moreover, an analytical framework for exploring this externality of pluriactivity has not yet been established. This paper therefore defines the contribution to land preservation by pluriactive farms as an internalization process of externality in hamlets and tries to detect this internalization process as signaling. Then this paper clarifies what process was involved in this contribution and what characteristics of pluriactive farms contribute to this process. The results show how pluriactive farms offering farm-based accommodations attain both private management and local farmland preservation under favorable farming conditions while householders hold off-farm jobs in western Japan. These farms do this by shifting their farming to labor-efficient rice production and by increasing their farm areas by taking on farmland from older farms. This behavior is supported by group farming within the hamlet area, which we can define as an off-farm farming activity. This paper reveals this complementary effect of pluriactivity in the hamlets, which prevents farmland from being abandoned. This is modern incentive-compatible behavior of farmers in the rural community, which attains both household and community rationality, and was measured as signaling.This signaling can provide a logical basis for public support of these farms. Thus it can be an effective tool for policy evaluation of farm activities having external effects such as multifunctionality.
