広域観光を推進する組織のネットワーク形成に関する研究

Many local governments are now looking to regional tourism. Each of them has drawn up some plans, but they have not so far produced expected results because it does not have efficient staff and sufficient finances. As a result, some broader-scale administrative operations are attempted to promote regional tourism involving multiple municipal stakeholders. Many such efforts at regional tourism, however, have also lapsed into a dead letter because every member of the organizations has intense rivalries with each other to attract tourists and, in consequence, they lack the leadership to achieve their goals. In addition, most studies of tourism have failed to focus on wide areas as a single site of tourist activity and to take into consideration the integrating function of a network that can achieve a compromise between possibly competitive actors. The aim of this study is to suggest how to enhance wider-scale cooperation to promote regional tourism. This study makes use of Ronald S. Burt's theory which stresses the necessity for suitable networking of organizations. The basic elements of Burt's theory are made up of "network closure" and "structural holes" of social capital. Burt argues that an adequate combination of "network closure" and "structural holes" gives organizations a good performance. Local governments necessarily have a connection with companies and residents and so on, and in that sense each government has a strong "network closure". There is lots of information for tourists in a wide destination area but most of such information is hidden in "structural holes". In order for the hidden information to be available, some functions are essentially required to be fulfilled in the local area. This study demonstrates that railway service can give local government useful information. For example, the west coast areas in Akita and Aomori prefectures get useful information from the local railway service (the JR Gono line), and the Okitama area in Yamagata prefecture obtains valuable information from railway service (Yamagata Railway) too. Various events at a railway station can act as a catalyst for creating network closure in the area, and a train may dig out and transmit information of high value out of structural holes. Burt states that what is important to networks is the function of rewiring, which can be performed, I would like to argue, by railway services as well as newspapers, photo-contests, websites, and so on. In conclusion, it is necessary for a relevant wide area to find "the function of rewiring" to promote regional tourism.