Joining Policy Forums Together to Develop Ki-no-Eki, a Community Currency System for Forest Management in Japan: Dynamics of Policy Communication Networks

Hiromi Nakazato, Rui Izumi and Seunghoo Lim ()
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Hiromi Nakazato: School of Information and Communication, Meiji University, Tokyo 101 8301, Japan
Rui Izumi: School of Economics, Senshu University, Kanagawa 214 8580, Japan
Seunghoo Lim: Public Management and Policy Analysis Program, Graduate School of International Relations, International University of Japan, Niigata 949 7277, Japan

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-14

Abstract: In some mountainous areas of Japan, the Ki-no-Eki system, in which wood is collected to thin the forest and is exchanged for community currency, has been specifically designed and implemented as a solution to current and emerging forest governance issues. This study aimed to capture the evolutionary processes of a complete communication network consisting of organizations that joined policy forums to help develop the Ki-no-Eki system. A total of 26 policy forums were held from 2011 to 2019 to discuss the adoption and implementation of the Ki-no-Eki system across Japan, and coattendance and the resultant policy discourses among 62 participating Ki-no-Eki organizations in these forums were regarded as dynamic communication network processes. We analyzed how policy communication networks formed and evolved to understand the underlying network dynamics driven by not only endogenous network processes—bonding and bridging social capital—but also exogenous effects defined by actors’ attributes. We employed the stochastic actor-oriented model for network dynamics to manage the collected longitudinal undirected network data. We found (i) the emergence of bonding social capital and (ii) homophilic and heterophilic connections in communication networks, which provided insightful explanations of the driving forces of social cohesion among Ki-no-Eki organizations engaged in forest management in Japan.

Keywords: forum participation and policy communication dynamics; forest governance in Japan; bonding and bridging social capital; homophily; community currency; Ki-no-Eki; stochastic actor-oriented model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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