IDEC

Entrepreneurship is critical to economic development because it promotes economic growth. Start-ups require a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem to succeed, but being the world’s third-largest economy, Japan does not have a satisfactory level of entrepreneurship. The objective of this study was to find the magnitude of the gap in entrepreneurial activities in Japan compared with other similar economies and to find the significant entrepreneurial attitudes for this gap. Therefore, this study used Global Entrepreneurship Monitor data from 2001–2018 and applied the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method. Three outcome variables have been used for measuring the entrepreneurial activities: Entrepreneurship, Investment, and Future Intention of Entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial activity gap has been decomposed in terms of four entrepreneurial attitudes (Network, Opportunity, Confidence, and Fear of Failure) in Japan. The results show that Confidence shares most of the part (50–60%) of the explained portion of the Entrepreneurship gap in Japan compared to other countries. For the investment gap in Japan, Confidence and Network explain most of the gap (about 60–70%), whereas Confidence and Opportunity are the most responsible (85–90%) for the gap in future business intention in Japan. This study is the first attempt to identify the entrepreneurial attitudes behind the entrepreneurial gap in Japan and provides important policy implications to enhance entrepreneurial activities in Japan as well as in other similar economies for sustainable economic development.

On October 6. 2000, an earthquake with the magnitude of 7.3 hit the western part of Tottori prefecture. Although the earthquake was bigger than Hyougo-ken Nanbu earthquake in 1995, fatality numbered zero and completely destroyed houses was no more than 360. However, many houses were damaged by liquefaction at reclaimed lands along Sakaiminato-city and Yonago-city. The authors made the questionnaire and survey relating to the damages of houses due to the liquefaction in Abe-Hikona housing estate. This paper presents the results of the investigations. Questionnaire-survey.

As the traffic congestion in Kamakura Area is serious because of many visitors by cars on holidays, they have been trying to introduce TDM measures by conduction social experiments. This paper reports the experiment of Eco-free ticket system of public transportation in 1998. According to the questionnaire survey conducted in the experiment, the expectation of tourists toward the ticket was found to be high. It was also indicated that such ticket system many increase the number of tourists who prefer good environment for pedestrians and public transportation.