A Study of the Impact of Road Damage Reports by Students utilizuing LINE as a report tool in Tsukuba City

Abstract

This study aims to demonstrate how the Univ. of Tsukuba students and the Tsukuba City Gov. road maintenenace officials co-produced road damage detection services for the citizens efficiently and effectively by utilizing LINE, a social networking service, as a damage report system. Having analyzed the past records of road maintenance activities in Tsukuba, we found that the main inhabitants in the area with a lot of road damage reports in Tsukuba are the Univ. of Tsukuba students. In addition, having conducted a questionnaire survey, we found that most the Univ. of Tsukuba students had discovered road damages in the past, but they had not reported it to the Tsukuba City Gov. From the above-mentioned two findings, we hypothesized that road maintenance works can be streamlined by increasing the damage reports by the students. Then, we conducted an implementation experiment in the target area to test how the students will respond to three different incentive conditions on the damage reportings. And we analyzed the cost reduction impact of the LINE-utilized.