This attempts to re-examine the typology of a decoupling status from the view of its quality(relative/absolute) and its degree(good/bad). Then, it shows what property of the decoupling status each of the indexes measure in terms of the quality and the degree of the decoupling status by drawing the current two decoupling indexes from the “coupling” concept .In addition, it proposes an approach to measure the degree of the decoupling status, while identifying (the type of) the decoupling status by having the environmental-efficiency-index-based-decoupling index, one of the two indexes, built into a decoupling status classification diagram.

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This study aims to elucidate the purchasing behavior of consumers based on their preference of home-use energy equipment and environmental awareness in order to contribute to a prospective smart house. The authors conducted a questionnaire survey for buyers of new, detached houses in Hachioji city and Tama city from July to August, 2014 as part of the study. According to the results of a binary logistic regression analysis conducted on the observations of the survey, the main determinants contributing to the purchase of smart house include double-income families, large households, and individuals who routinely practice environment-friendly behavior.

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The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of corporate environmental education with the index of organizational citizenship behavior and to clarify the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior/organizational climate and pro-environmental behaviors in corporations. The results clearly showed that the environmental education is supposed to be effective, the implementation level of pro-environmental behaviors depends on the difference of organizational climate and the organizational citizenship behavior has the effect on pro-environmental behaviors because the employees working on the organizational citizenship behavior tend to work on the pro-environmental behaviors as well.

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In this study, we explored the relationship between environmental awareness and buying behavior of environmental-conscious products by analyzing actual consumer’s buying history data and conscious survey data and discussed about the possibilities of this kind of the analysis. At first, factor analysis was performed for the answers related to environmental awareness in the survey and extracted 5 factors. Then we fitted the generalized linear mixed model to the data consists of the factors and buying probabilities of toilet paper whose trade name includes environmental related words. The result suggested the budget-minded factor affects the buying probabilities of that kind of toilet paper.

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The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of information behavior on psychological resilience. Information behavior was considered within the context of Internet use for the purposes of escape (surfing, online gaming, etc.), and using e-mail to seek advice. We hypothesized that escaping from reality by Internet use reduces psychological resilience, while using e-mail to seek advice improves psychological resilience. Data collected by questionnaire surveys of university students in the information sciences were analyzed by structural equation modeling, and the results appeared to support our hypothesis. In terms of psychological resilience, the beneficial effect of using e-mail to seek advice was less than that obtained through an altruistic lifestyle, but slightly greater than the benefit obtained by reading good books offering mental and spiritual sustenance. The findings suggested that the effect of Internet use on psychological resilience should be considered in studies on information behavior.

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In this study, the authors developed text mining techniques for helping to identify attitude of commentators towards the theme addressed in public comments with using co-occurrence of issues and adjective verbs and visualizing to identify the differences in mention of issues by attributes (gender, age and occupation) in large-scale public comments. As the result of applying the developed techniques to submitted comments to the “public comment for choices on energy and the environment” implemented by National Policy Unit in 2012, it was possible to identify the attitude towards the themes, and differences in mention of issues by the attributes.

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This study aims to understand the effective management of forests by investigating the various types of property management in Nanbu town, one of hilly areas in Japan. Specifically, this study focuses on “absentee landlords” who own their property away from their current residence. After characterizing Nanbu using geographical and socio-economic indexes, I analyzed the relationship between recognition of planted-forest management and other related variables. The study found that the absentee landlords who own property in Nanbu has consciousness of possession but cannot manage their forests properly. This case study adds new information on property management by “absentee landlords” in the hilly area.

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Long term disaster prevention projects have frequently delayed due to insufficient recognition on the projects. Policy makers would not understand the negative effects of the delay period, leading welfare losses in a society. This study estimated the welfare losses (per year) by the delay on tsunami prevention projects. The welfare losses were calculated from 301 yen to 359 yen for 2 years delay; from 848 yen to 926 yen for 4 years delay; from 948 yen to 1,199 yen for 6 years delay. The result indicated that the WTP would be influenced by a respondent’s income and perceived risk levels when the perceived risk is low, and only the risk when it is high.

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The livelihood rehabilitation plan implemented in the villages displaced by the Nam Theun 2 Dam Hydropower Project has been criticized for the non-sustainable-use of resources and increasing disparity in income. In this research, interviews and analysis of remote sensing image were conducted to understand the current state of natural resources utilization and identified the factors causing the disparity in income among 16 villages which received the same compensation. As a result, forest loss situation in each village was figured out. The disparity in the income can be explained by geographic condition, income structure and literacy rate. The impact of female literacy rate on village income varies depending on its income structure. It has been revealed that villages with lower agricultural production have a larger disparity in income, which can also be correlated to the literacy rate.

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This paper aims to examine changes in livelihood structures over a 40-year period (1975-2014) in a mountainous village in the North Toraja region of Indonesia., by semi-structured interview survey and network analysis of the field interview data. To detect the time-series change of the local peoples’ livelihood situation, the network centrality index was calculated for each livelihood items. By the inspection of the deference of centrality, 3 periods (1979-1980, 1999-2000 and 2009-2010) yielded significance by paired t-test. The results indicate a recent rural livelihood diversification trend. Furthermore the change point of time-series centrality overlapped with a period of road building and irrigation installation.

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Implementation of global environmental agreements has been regarded as fulfilment of obligations. However, Japan introduced the Invasive Alien Species Act based on the non-binding guidelines adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This study shows how this outliner case had been developed. Four major elements are; ①policy paradigm shift by CBD and its empowerment to the Ministry of the Environment, ②supply of policy innovation by the transnational epistemic community to the CBD regime, ③development of researchers networks similar to the epistemic community and their advocacy to the government, ④the government’s learning supported by the researchers networks. In this learning process, we found out both rational learning and social acceptance.

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It is recognized that nature experience for parents and children is necessary for sustainable development. Because of various outside risk, however, opportunities for children to play outside are decreasing. In particular, some of prekindergarten children often play within only their house, because of trend toward nuclear families and lack of communication among local communities. This paper examines possibility of local child-support programs through nature experience programs, illustrating a case study of “a model project of childcare in nature for families with prekindergarten children” starting from 2013 in Nishinomiya, Japan; and methods to conduct such local child-support programs in natural environment in partnership with local government, NPO, cooperative association and private company.

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