The number of 60+ CSC participants will continue to grow as the older population increases in Japan. The elderly in Japan tend to prefer CSC over other available options such as community centers or fitness clubs. This preference is due to the affordable price and multiple benefits available at the CSC. A government report which investigated citizens’ attitudes toward private fitness and sport clubs indicated the percent of people preferring: lower utilization fees (49.3 %), improved accessibility of clubs (22.4 %), and providing sport facilities specifically for the old or disabled (13.8 %) (Cabinet Office 2013). Even if older people preferred to utilize a private sport organization, more the affordable price of CSC usually makes it the ultimate choice. Moreover, one of the CSC aims is to provide a convenient place for people to engage in sport activity. The survey of MEXT (2012) corroborated the success of this intent by finding that 90.3 % of the CSC were located either in schools (48.2 %) or in public sport facilities (42.1 %). Older people generally have poor mobility, so the convenience of travel and overall distance from their homes to an exercise facility becomes a major factor in whether or not they participate in the sport club’s activities. Thus, they are most likely to utilize community sport facilities which are nearby (Lin and Sakuno 2012). In addition to the accessibility of the facility, social connections also influence the extent of sport club engagement by older people. Thus the previously mentioned Cabinet Office’s survey reported that one of the main reasons why older people engage in CSC is because their friends or people in their neighborhood also participate. Rather than engaging in sport by themselves, older people generally prefer to engage in sport organizations in which they have a connection with others. Past studies have provided evidence that engaging in CSC also benefits people by fostering connections with the society and thereby increasing the individual’s social network. This benefit is especially true for older people (Okayasu et al. 2010) as the size of social networks and number of social contacts are important determinants of life satisfaction and successful aging among the elderly (Rowe and Kahn 1997; Fernandez-Ballesteros et al. 2001; Wenzel and Sörensen 2000; Katz 2009).

While looking over the purpose of CSC’s policy, one aspect of the Japanese government policy on CSCs is that they are hoped are to provide an increased opportunity for people to engage in sport activity, as well as to create an intergenerational platform to bring the young and old together (MEXT 2000). The importance of intergenerational communication to older people has already been noted (Katz 2009). Thus engagement in CSC benefits older people not only by increasing their functional ability but also by improving their mental and social health. The intergenerational relationship is considered to be a crucial factor which allows them to more successfully cope with aging and remain socially integrated (Silverstein and Bengston 1991) as well as improve their psychological well-being (Rossi and Rossi 1990; Wenzel and Sörensen 2000) and life satisfaction (McCamish-Svensson et al. 1999). Unlike other private sport organizations, such as fitness clubs, which offer high priced specific services, the CSC provide interaction based sport activities which helps elders increase their friendship network. Unlike other social welfare organizations, such as community centers, the CSC are not limited to one age group and thus provide an opportunity for intergenerational communication. Thus, the type of sport engagement offered by the CSC benefits the aging by offering the potential of improving their physical, psychological, and social health.

Differences in both the nature of sport engagement and the type of management system in the various locations of the CSC was briefly mentioned in part I. Governmental programs in urban as opposed to rural areas generally have both more varied and a larger amount of resources to implement sport policy. Participants in different CSC are assumed to have different opinions regarding their particular CSC, such differences would be expected to be particularly different for urban and rural CSC, with urban participants in assumed to produce more favorable evaluations because of the more abundant sport resources. Hypotheses relating to the above suppositions were examined by Lin and Sakuno (2013). Tokyo metropolis was used to represent an urban example, and Yamanashi prefecture was selected as an example of a rural CSC in their study. The results partly supported the above suppositions. The first set of results highlighted the effect of place on the different participants’ evaluation. The second set of results indicated that rural participants produced significantly more favorable evaluations of the CSC than did participants in the urban areas. To evaluate differences in the characteristics of the participants in urban and rural areas, in this portion of the chapter we will discuss how CSC in the two areas provide sport service and how the participants engage in sport activity. Three models were designed to examine the participants’ different evaluations toward CSC in urban and rural areas. The results of a multiple regression analysis show that, in model I (total), the interpersonal interaction dimension is the best predictor of the overall evaluation (R² = .592; p = .000); in model II (urban), interpersonal interaction is also the best predictor (R² = .605; p = .000). However, in model III (rural), facility access is the best predictor (R² = .513; p = .000) (Table 3.2). For interpersonal interactions, the interactions that occurred during service delivery had the largest influence on service quality (Gronroos 1990). Surprenant and Solomon (1987) suggest that the process of delivery is more important than the overall outcome. The key element is thus the interaction between customer and employee; this interaction forms a crucial aspect of the influence on customers’ perception of service quality. Elements of this interpersonal interaction quality include attitude, behavior, and skill of service employees (Czepiel et al. 1985; Gronroos 1990; Brady and Cronin 2001).