丸山 敦史

Since the introduction of LED lamps a decade ago, the plant factory with artificial lighting (PFAL) has been expected to be a savior that overcomes the food crisis, brings food safety, and enhances environmental friendliness. Despite such high expectations, the diffusion of commercial crop production in PFALs has been slow. It has been said that the main reason for this is the huge initial investment required to construct PFALs. This situation has attracted studies to access the economic feasibility of the crop production in PFALs. One thing strange in these studies is that they pay little attention to the scale of their PFALs. PFALs are factories so that they would be subject to economies of scale. If so, the scale of PFALs is an important factor that determines the economic feasibility of plant production in PFALs. However, no study has thus far attempted to examine whether economies of scale exist in the construction of PFALs. To fill this gap, this paper tries to examine, based on the data on the investment cost of PFAL construction collected from various countries and regions in the world, whether economies of scale exist in PFAL construction and, if yes, how it affects the economic viability of the plant production in PFALs by searching for the minimum scale that ensures PFAL crop production economically viable. The results show that economies of scale exist in PFAL construction, and that the production of lettuce, PFALs’ most popular crop, is now well on a commercial basis with the technology level of the most advanced PFAL operators, but strawberries has not reached that stage yet. It is also shown that crop production in PFALs is highly sensitive to changes in the yield and the price of the crops: A 30% decline either in the yield or the price of lettuce would easily bring PFALs bankruptcy. It is discussed that the optimum scale of PFALs would depend not only on the economies of scale but also on the transaction costs, such as the costs of searching and keeping a sufficient number of buyers who offer good and stable crop prices.

In this study, we investigated whether local specialties were effective marketing resources for tourism promotion. Correspondence analysis of data from a questionnaire survey conducted in Kuroishi city revealed the following. The ratio of tourists whose primary motive for visiting the area was local specialties increased with increasing distance from their hometown. Furthermore, a higher percentage of tourists were visiting the area for local specialties as opposed to just passing through on the way to other destinations around the city. Moreover, first-time visitors enjoyed passing through the area, while repeating visitors tended to enjoy staying there. These results suggest that considering differences in tourist preferences is important for tourism promotion

This paper examines the evaluation of potential domestic consumer demand for cloudy apple juices produced in Aomori Prefecture when considering their standardization as an attribute. As a result, the following points are clarified.<br>First, the most important attribute of apple juices for respondents is the designation of domesticity, as well as the indication of product district. Approximately 70 per cent of respondents prefer the legal mandating of a country-of-origin label and apple GAP on juice as an indicator of product safety.<br>Ordered probit analyses of the influence of domesticity attributes reveal that whether the juice is produced by leading manufacturers, is a domestic product and comes from particular production districts encourage apple juice purchases by women who have trust in such attributes. There is also a similar tendency for elderly people, who are more knowledgeable about district brands, grades, domestic products, and production districts. Therefore, the domesticity attribute could play a significant role in assuring a sense of safety and security for consumers as Japanese society continues to age. In addition, the attributes of domesticity and product districts are highly evaluated by high-income consumers.<br>The results from probit analyses indicate that high-income respondents are significantly more likely to purchase cloudy, additive-free and not from concentrate apple juices. Estimation results also show that cloudy and additive free apple juices are more highly evaluated by smaller sized households. High-income respondents purchase expensive apple juices from Aomori Prefecture more frequently, while the elderly prefers additive-free juices, and not from concentrate juices are preferred by housewives. These results indicate a high consciousness of safety and security by the elderly and housewives.<br>We also find that those with high incomes support the legal mandating of a country-of-origin label and the standardization of the apple GAP. High-income and elderly consumers are more interested in legally mandating country-of-origin labels. This result could be an affect of the several Chinese food safety incidents in 2007 and 2008. The standardization of apple GAP is less important to students than to housewives who are comparatively more interested in food safety.<br>In sum, our study identifies the variation in purchasing patterns for cloudy apple juice by gender, age, household size, occupation and income. Our analysis identifies housewives, elderly, and those with high incomes as being more likely to purchase cloudy apple juice. It is highly recommended for Aomori Prefecture and those cooperatives involved in apply juice production to provide more information on their apple juices, especially to housewives and the elderly, in order to enhance their sales. High-quality apple juices are being produced. Therefore, while such juices should be privileged, the companies in Aomori should produce cloudy juices in accordance with high quality standards, and administrators should develop advertising strategies aimed at high income and other key consumer sectors.

Consumer concern about the safety of imported foods is increasing in Japan, the world's largest agricultural import country. In this study, Japanese consumer concerns toward residual agricultural chemical on Chinese agricultural products and the causal relationship of their behavior were captured in two econometric analyses. First, we identified by traditional regression analysis that the riskrelated information in the news media have had negative impacts on imports. Second, we showed clearly by using Structural Equation Modeling that consumer concerns about the process of agricultural production and inspection in China has specified their behavior. When related processor, wholesaler and retailer provided consumers with precise information about the safety of Chinese agricultural products, it was suggested that the import demand may recover even with the present price level. These results will be useful in the development of marketing information for imported agricultural products from other countries.