The purpose of this study is that even though the government has adopted a regional development strategy through the urban-rural integration policy in the scope of local governments, especially in the case of local small and medium-sized cities, popul...
The purpose of this study is that even though the government has adopted a regional development strategy through the urban-rural integration policy in the scope of local governments, especially in the case of local small and medium-sized cities, population decline continues due to the low fertility rate and the outflow of the youth and women population. To see where it is.
To this end, in terms of empirical surveys and research, citizens' opinions on population decline were investigated centering on Sacheon, the representative urban-rural complex city in the region, and based on this, the direction of population policy was sought. In addition, through literature review, overseas cases, and inspection of population policies in Sacheon-si and Gyeongsangnam-do, the implications for overcoming the low birthrate and outflow of population in Sacheon were drawn. On the other hand, by dividing and analyzing groups by gender, marital status, and migration plan for Sacheon-si citizens, it was intended to find implications for specific policy alternatives.
Looking at the results, first of all, it was found that the citizens' perception of the current state of population decline was desperately feeling a sense of crisis due to population decline as expected. In addition, living infrastructure such as ‘hospitals,’ ‘cultural facilities’ and ‘parks’ were first selected as the settlement conditions that the citizens of Sacheon-si consider important, followed by ‘job issues,’ ‘transportation’ and ‘educational environment.’ On the other hand, the evaluation of Sacheon-si's settlement conditions did not give good evaluations on ‘housing price,’ ‘transportation’, ‘job issues’, and ‘medical’ and the result was contrasted with the above mentioned important settlement conditions. In this regard, the citizens of Sacheon-si showed negative evaluations of most of the policies to respond to the population decline of local governments and it was found that countermeasures were urgent.
In addition, citizens of Sacheon-si, who have relocation plans, showed negative views in terms of local satisfaction and local government policy evaluation, compared to other citizens. In other words, it means leaving the region when the level of satisfaction in the region decreases and when we are disappointed with the local government policy. A closer look at the contents shows that citizens with relocation plans regarded “infrastructure such as road and traffic” more importantly, and in particular, the negative perception of local government policies was stronger than that of other citizens. Citizens who have a migration plan move to the surrounding city where the environment is better than Sacheon-si, because of their disappointment with the policies of local governments and losing expectations, where they live now, rather than waiting for regional development in a future-oriented. It is a part that seems to require a more detailed study about these.
On the other hand, meaningful results were also obtained through the results of comparative analysis of differences in perceptions by group. When comparing the average by dividing the groups based on gender and marital status, women were more sensitive than men. In the case of marriage, there was no difference in statistical significance in the recognition result regardless of the presence or absence of marriage.