Rural areas in low-income countries often face severe poverty typically caused by insufficient accessibility to basic facilities. Improvements in rural roads are expected to reduce poverty although the mechanism has not been investigated sufficiently. This study empirically analyzes the impacts of rural road improvements implemented from 2012 to 2014 in Cambodia, highlighting local residents’ accessibility to local markets. This study assumes two causal relationships: rural road improvements have upgraded the accessibility and travel frequency to local markets, and the upgraded accessibility and travel frequency to local markets have led to a growth in local residents’ income. The hypotheses are statistically tested with a dataset developed through a questionnaire survey conducted in three areas in 2016. The dataset contains responses from 400 local residents to questions concerning their social attributes, livelihoods, travel modes, travel frequency, and time/cost of travels to the basic facilities. The quasi-experimental design incorporating a difference-in-differences design and an inverse possibility of treatment weighting approach revealed that the improvements in rural roads did not affect travel time nor travel cost but significantly enhanced travel frequency to local markets, and that an increase in the travel frequency to local markets and travel time savings significantly contributed to the households’ income growth. The results suggest that the improvement of seasonal reliability in accessing local markets through an introduction of all-weather roads could be critical to enhance household income, particularly in areas where agriculture is a leading industry and weather conditions are unstable across seasons.
Most of Japan's energy supply depends on imports from foreign countries, making the independence ratio of energy in Japan very low. The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami led to a mass shutdown of all the nuclear plants in Japan, a stoppage that is still in effect. In this paper, we review the energy supply situation and some social problems faced by rural areas in Japan. Given that lifestyles in rural Japan are reliant on automobiles, there is significant demand for the establishment of a sustainable mobility society. Furthermore, Japan is now entering an aging society ahead of other countries. In order to enhance the vitalization of rural areas and accelerate the establishment of sustainable society, our project developed low-CO2-emission vehicles (i.e., a single-driver EV [micro-EV] and a low-speed E-bus) for elderly people and tourists through the cooperation of regional industries, a local university, and a city office. This paper also reports some trial test results on renewable energy utilization as the driving energy supply for these low-emission vehicles. 相似文献
Methods of updating disaggregate discrete choice models have been proposed as a means of obtaining better transferability.
However, the temporal transferability of models updated for better spatial transferability has rarely been analysed, and the
factors affecting temporal transferability have not been determined. This paper deals with one updating method—the use of
disaggregate data to update alternative-specific constants—and investigates the factors affecting the temporal transferability
of the updated constants. In the analysis, repeated cross-section data collected in the Chukyo metropolitan area are divided,
efficiently generating many application areas. The analysis showed that the factors can depend on regional characteristics
and past travel behaviours (inertia), and are anti-symmetric and path-dependent of changes in the level of service. 相似文献
Revealed preference (RP) data and stated preference (SP) data have complementary characteristics for model estimation. To enhance the advantages of both data types, a combined estimation method is proposed. This paper discusses the method and practical considerations in applying it, and introduces a new method of considering serial correlation of RP and SP data. An empirical analysis is also presented. 相似文献
Disaggregate behaviour choice models have been improved in many aspects, but they are rarely evaluated from the viewpoint of their ability to express intention to change travel behaviour. This study compared various models, including objective and latent models and compensatory and non-compensatory decision-making models. Latent models contain latent factors calculated using the LISREL (linear structural relations) model. Non-compensatory models are based on a lexicographic-semiorder heuristic. This paper proposes ‘probability increment’ and ‘joint probability increment’ as indicators for evaluating the ability of these models to express intention to change travel behaviour. The application to commuting travel data in the Chukyo metropolitan area in Japan showed that the appropriate non-compensatory and latent models outperform other models. 相似文献