Evaluating Municipal Tourism Policy from How Visitors Walk Around Historical Heritage Area: An Evaluation of the “Walking Path of History” of Dazaifu City, Japan, Based on Visitors’ Kaiyu Behavior

Abstract

Dazaifu City, located in Fukuoka, Japan, is famous for its unique position in Japanese history from the seventh century. Thus, there remain many historical and cultural heritages in its administrative division. Among many tourist attractions, the places that attract largest numbers of tourists are the Dazaifu Tenman-gu Shrine and Kyushu National Museum. Dazaifu City government tries to utilize these cultural and historical assets and sets out the comprehensive policy to regard a whole Dazaifu City itself as “museum everywhere as it is.” Under this general strategic policy, city officials devised a policy of “walking path of history,” which connects many places of interest in the town they would like to introduce to tourists. They intended to have tourists use the walking path of history and visit many attractive places on the walking path. But up to now, most of tourists do not know the walking path so that there are few citizens or tourists who use the walking path of history. In this study, we address the problem of how we can induce tourists to utilize the walking path of history and propose means to solve the problem while clarifying the obstacles to attain the goal based on tourists’ Kaiyu behaviors within Dazaifu City.