Factors of Attractiveness in Strategic Regional Agricultural Development : Case Study from Seiro-machi, Japan

Recently in Japan, agriculture has a significant potential to exert multi-functionality despite its small share in the GDP of town economies, because the interdependent and cooperative relationships (both direct and indirect) among residents are formed through not only consuming agricultural products and sharing the same space with the agricultural sector, but also by enjoying multi-functionality. Therefore, a new understanding about the role of agriculture has great significance for town-reinvention. However, since agriculture in a town generally consists of not only homogeneous farmers but also a large number of various stakeholders, the shape of agriculture in the reinvention of a town needs to be drawn after clarifying the consciousness of the stakeholders toward agriculture based on the social and economic relationships among them. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to introduce a new approach of "strategic regional agricultural development" into the process of city (town) reinvention, specifically based on the results of a questionnaire about the consciousness of residents of Seiro Town (Seiro-machi) in Niigata Prefecture, Japan. The future course and policy implications for realizing "attractive agriculture" in the town by identifying the structure and causal relationship of attractiveness formation were clarified