Evaluation of Rural Revitalization Activities using the Most Significant Change Technique and Its Multifaceted Impacts

Abstract

The continuity of collaborative activities and the deepening of participants' understanding are important to implementing meaningful transdisciplinary research. In recent years, transdisciplinary frameworks have become relevant in various research fields, and the rural planning study has accumulated many cases of regional collaborative activities. However, in some cases, ad hoc community collaboration activities do not deepen participants' understanding or change their behavior. Appropriate, effective evaluation methods are needed to solve this problem and improve collaborative activities in the transdisciplinary research context. This study applied the Most Significant Change (MSC) technique to evaluate regional collaborative activities conducted in a rural village of Saijo City, Ehime prefecture, Japan. We provided a case study of the participatory, qualitative evaluation of regional collaborative activity and discussed the MSC technique’s potential through analysis of questionnaires and group work using text mining. The analysis revealed that participants' statements changed before and after the MSC group work. We also found that it contributed to increasing participants' motivation to continue working on the activity. This case study may inform future deployment of the assessment of regional collaborative activities and the evolution of education towards sustainable development.