Whereas the underuse of resources due to the tragedy of anticommons is well known, resource underuse due to demand loss has received little attention. In this paper, I examined the governance to regenerate underused natural resources by a case study on semi-natural grassland, called "Uenohara," in Fujiwara District located in a Japanese mountain village. Uenohara served as local commons, providing roofs, fertilizer, forage, and food to local residents until the 1950s. However, changes in social conditions abolished its utility, and vegetation succession with a decline in biodiversity followed. Under these circumstances, Forest College Seisui comprising urban residents regenerated the traditional landscape of Uenohara through thatch cropping, controlled burning, and other activities in collaboration with local participants. The new governance, which regenerated underused resources, was characterized by (1) diversification and expansion of participants, (2) role sharing and organic structure, and (3) shifts in benefits. In addition, this study showed that three factors are important for solving underuse problems: (1) manage for use, (2) placeness of the object, and (3) succession of knowledge. In future, more case studies and creation of a theoretical framework are needed to achieve practical solutions.

Cultural ecosystem services are nonmaterial benefits that individuals acquire from the ecosystem, such as recreation, aesthetic enjoyment, and tourism. The quantification of cultural services is considered difficult to accurately make compared to other forest ecosystem services. Although some studies evaluate cultural services from forest recreation, “simple quantification” based on easy-to-obtain data is criticized for disregarding the local context and missing essential details. Therefore, this study evaluates a structure providing cultural services, and the local or detailed factors missed by simple quantification, while illustrating objective and statistical evidence with careful observations and a comprehension of local society. This study focuses on urban resident participation in natural resource management through recreational activities in Japanese mountain villages, using Fujiwara District, Minakami Town, Japan, as a case study, and by conducting a quantitative text analysis of 424 essays containing participants’ experiences and impressions. Using the software KH Coder, the Jaccard index is used to calculate co-occurrence relationships between frequently used words, visualizing the results in a network diagram. Additionally, several codes are added to keywords that characterize this case, and correlations between each code are examined. From the analysis, we discovered that social factors, such as interaction with comrades and locals, considerably influence participants’ positive emotions.