Abstract
Identity plays an important role in place-making. It empowers community movements to build up a common space worthwhile to live in with pride as well as attachment to their place. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between identity and neighborhood (or community) based activism by a covariance structure analysis. The analysis is based on a survey of community activities in Nichinan town which is a typical depopulated rural area in Japan. In order to find the answer to the question, how and why identity motivates community activism, some literature reviews on identity for collective action are presented in section 2. The results of basic analysis on the community activities in Nichinan town are shown in section 3. The validity of the covariance structure analysis on identity and community activities in this study is discussed in section 4. Finally, a policy to motivate identities which could foster marginal area development is proposed.
