The COVID-19 pandemic led to major changes in society, including in citizen groups concerned with the environment. This paper investigates the response of environmental citizen groups in Hiroshima ...Prefecture to the coronavirus pandemic and identifies the impact of the pandemic on these groups. The paper presents the challenges of geographical study of environmental movements from the perspective of geography of the information society.For citizen groups concerned with the environment, responding to the coronavirus pandemic meant responding to informatization. However, for Japan's citizen groups, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) has not meant a revolution in mobilization, expanding their network to the outside world and widening their movement; instead, it has been used to replace word-of-mouth networks and has contributed to maintaining organizational operations. The coronavirus pandemic forced people to adapt to informatization and threatened to weed out environmental citizen groups that had been active for many years in the case of their inability to adapt to computerization.For environmental citizen groups, the fact that ICT-based networks function primarily inwardly indicates that they will not be able to use them to address the problems of the lack of active members, aging of members, and difficulties related to generational change. Networks must be open to the outside world if they are to gain new supporters and collaborators, especially among the younger generation. There are high expectations of the younger generation, who tend to be familiar with ICT, as members of the movement. Temporary mobilization and excitement can occur through social media, but this success has not been converted to sustainable, grounded activities. Making the movements that have arisen in cyberspace take hold in real space remains a challenge.Environmental problems occur in real spaces and are our own problems. The fusion of cyberspace and real space risks weakening the sense of real place and ownership. It is important to mobilize supporters for the environmental movement while emphasizing that the phenomena that need to be addressed are happening in real space.In the geographical studies of environmental movements, future studies should focus on the management of movement organizations and their adaptation to informatization, the relationship between real space and cyberspace in environmental movements, and the construction of movement theory with a spatial perspective.
In the search for ways to encourage more participation in voluntary activities, more attention is being given to what motivates people to participate. Participation in voluntary activity is usually ...explained by rational choice theory, but theoretical predictions have not always concurred with empirical outcomes. We proposed a theory of volunteer opportunity and verified the theory by using a web survey. Our central hypothesis was that having access to opportunities leads to higher participation rates in voluntary activity. Our analysis of the factors involved in participation in voluntary activity supported the hypotheses based on this theory. For example, number of interests, some sources of information related to the area and specific activities, and other factors connected with participation opportunities had significant positive effects on participation. Factors related to egoistic motives, however, were either not significant or had significant negative effects, and economic models were thus not supported. It was clear that participation in voluntary activity is related to number of participation opportunities, and we suggest further development of the theory of volunteer opportunity.
