"THE STUDY ON EFFECTIVE USE OF PUBLIC MUSEUMS BASED ON DEA - Human resource development in decentralized governance"(in Japanese)

We applied Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to identify factors that increase the effectiveness of museum activities for human resource development (educational programs). We divide public museums into the following three categories: a first group which is successful in educational programs (desirable model), a second group (environmentally handicapped model) which have smaller budgets but still can function effectively if they have a large collection and are active in collaboration with other regional educational organizations such as schools, NPOs, and other museums, and a third group (developing model) which have larger budgets than the other groups but whose educational programs are unsuccessful. The last group might be revitalized through more active collaboration with other regional organizations. Also, it appears that museums without other facilities such as theatrical venues function more effectively than museums with such a broad range of facilities. Finally, we find that the efficiency of museums does not appear to be affected by whether they are under the control of the Board of Education or directly subordinate to local government.