Abstract
Utsunomiya-city is planning to introduce Light Rail Transit (LRT). However, there are skeptical or indifferent citizens towards the LRT plan. It is important to make these people get interested in LRT. Under the background, we developed three types of public relations (PR) tools to promote citizens' interest in machizukuri with LRT, which are virtual reality (VR), websites and augmented reality (AR). We conducted experiments of using the three tools for PR and analyzed changes in public awareness and effects of the tools before and after experiencing the PR. It was found that the PR using each tool was useful in promoting citizens' interest in machizukuri with LRT. Especially, AR had an advantage in building visual images of LRT and future travel behavior. Also we found that the effective PR tool was different depending on socio-economic characteristics.
