Visualizing Relationality as Assets toward Communities Vitalization

Abstract

Japan is now facing serious problems such as rapid depopulation and a super-aging society. Therefore, it is indispensable to revitalize local communities in Japan. In this study, we model a community as a system composed of humans, “Mono,” and “Koto” as its elements, and their relationality. In Japanese, “Mono” denotes tangible and physically perceived thing/entity, and “Koto” denotes intangible and cognitively conceived thing/entity. Focusing on the importance of relationality, we have introduced the concept of relationality assets and proposed the Gift & Circulation model as a mechanism to operate relationality assets in a community. In this study, firstly, by using MultiAgent Simulation, we evaluated the effect of model to community. After that, we introduced relationality assets to the field experiment by developing of the Android application and observed how it works. And we improved the application referring the result of questionnaire answered by participants.