A Study on Sustainable Operation and Management of Urban Regeneration Anchor Facilities - Focusing on Residents' Governance Preferences and Willingness to Pay in Seocheon County - Lee Ji Hyun Advisor : Prof. Cho, Kyu-man, Ph.D. Department of Architect...
A Study on Sustainable Operation and Management of Urban Regeneration Anchor Facilities - Focusing on Residents' Governance Preferences and Willingness to Pay in Seocheon County - Lee Ji Hyun Advisor : Prof. Cho, Kyu-man, Ph.D. Department of Architectural Engineering, Graduate School of Chosun University Confronting the dual crisis of population decline and local extinction, Seocheon County has developed a range of urban regeneration anchor facilities, including the Complex Connection Center, Together Sangsaeng Housing, Seongju Sai-Sangsaengteo, Live Workation in Janghang, and Janghang Aureum Stay. As hardware-oriented construction nears completion, however, concerns over sustainability have intensified due to shortfalls in operational budgets and professional capacity. Moving beyond the conventional supplier-oriented discourse, this study empirically examines residents' governance preferences and willingness to pay from the perspective of actual users, and proposes a tailored operation strategy through comparative analysis of a precedent region. A structured survey was administered to 235 residents and stakeholders of Seocheon County, and the data were analyzed via frequency analysis, chi-square tests, and one-way ANOVA using SPSS 28.0. Hampyeong County in Jeollanam-do—selected for its structural similarity as a population-declining county-level jurisdiction—was examined through a multi-layered case analysis integrating the evaluation framework of Lee et al. (2024), the expert-based AHP analysis of Noh and Lee (2024), and a comparative analysis of the operation ordinances of both counties. The principal findings are as follows. First, 73.2% of residents identified a "non-profit public-interest corporation (specialized intermediary organization)" as the most appropriate operator, and 85.1% endorsed reasonable user fees, confirming social consensus on the beneficiary-pays principle. Second, preference differences by age (p=.890) and residence (p=.412) were statistically non-significant, indicating a universal consensus transcending generational and geographical boundaries, whereas significant differences emerged according to project awareness (F=8.946, p<.001): high-involvement residents favored private operation for efficiency, while general residents preferred public-led operation for stability—a pattern consistent with Petty and Cacioppo's (1986) involvement theory. Third, the Hampyeong County case demonstrated that resident-led operation through village management social cooperatives, combined with revenue-generating models based on local specialty products, has been preemptively implemented in alignment with the Seocheon County findings. The convergence of residents' responses, academic indicators, and expert judgments, and the institutional design embodied in both counties’ ordinances provide multi-faceted validation of the study's conclusions. Based on these findings, this study proposes strengthening the institutional status of the Seocheon County Sustainable Regional Foundation, supplementing the recently enacted operation ordinance-through enforcement rules or amendment-to enable revenue reinvestment, and formulating a phased dual-track operation roadmap in which the Foundation initially leads operations and gradually transfers responsibility to village management social cooperatives whose capacities have been sufficiently developed.