Basic Report

Both lively debates about happiness being actively spreaded out in international and domestic level, political interest in 'quality of life' is increasing. Even Korea has the 14th world largest economy, it reveals the high suicide rate and low birth rate which reflects the relatively poor level of quality of life. While Estearlin's paradox, happiness does not increase in proportion to income level, is raised along with various kinds of theories related with happiness is appeared, increase of personal happiness is promoted to the one of the main roles of government. In response to this global trend, current government emphasizes the happiness of residents and quality of life by promoting HOPE area policy. HOPE area policy is considered as a new attempt to enhance the efficiency of the policy by providing a wide range of public services in areas beyond the administrative area unit aims to improve the quality of life experience. However, a variety of basic research is still needed, because even accurate diagnosis of the quality of life has not done yest and lack of policy formation as an initial step in the HOPE area. This study aims to explore new directions of regional development policy by analyzing through quality of life in the HOPE area. Analysis of the local government unit of HOPE area is consisted of 56 HOPE area and quality indicators presents five areas of life in the HOPE area policy to form index structure. Chapter two reviews previous studies related to the basic theory and the local living area. Previous research largely focused on measuring the quality of life in the administrative area level, this study is the first research regarding quality of life in the local government units. A basic theories relating with HOPE area, central place theory, networking theory which is about the association of each HOPE area, theory of regional cooperation to operate mechanism of HOPE area, are reviewed and showed how they are related with HOPE area. Chapter three deals with domestic and foreign policy practices in HOPE area. Firstly, background, concepts and types, standards and principles of HOPE area configuration, HOPE area composition, plans and projects in the HOPE area policy are reviewed as a domestic policy practices. Specifically, this study was to attempt an analysis of the HOPE area to derive the implications for future policy direction of the HOPE policy. In the process of cooperative project, efforts for the discovery of new projects are relatively weak, it still tended to focus on infrastructure and facilities installed, it was too concentrated in the projects of certain departments so it was hard to improve the overall quality of life, also it was difficult to supply package supports from a number of agencies, it showed poor cooperation to build a collaborative system in the beginning step in the HOPE area, and it revealed that it was hard to show joint use of the service within the HOPE. However, this study presents foreign policies related with HOPE area policy such as City-Region policy, Multi Area Agreement(MAA), Local Enterprise Partnership(LEP), and permanent residence independent area of Japan were introduced in detail.Chapter four contains empirical analysis model and results for the quality of life. This study finally set six domains, 14 sectors, and 38 indicators to analyze quality of life in the HOPE area, and each sector included both objective and subjective indicators. Main frame of analysis is divided into two folders, one is the comparative analysis of quality of life among HOPE areas, and second is the empirical analysis of the quality of living standard by applying inequality analysis of all indicators. As results, it was hard to show distinct spatial patterns of quality of life in the high and low quality of life in the HOPE area. However, it showed distinct regional characteristics in the six domains. Inequality analysis, GINI index, showed that generally, formation of HOPE area mitigated or increased the quality of life : rate of paved, per capita housing area, per capita wastewater discharge establishments, per capita GRDP, per capita local taxes, per capita private education institution, number of school by population, number of cultural facilities by population, number of medical employee by population showed significantly reduced extent.Finally, Chapter five proposes a promotion plan for increasing the quality of life based on empirical analysis and policy implications of the quality of life. HOPE area policy should be promoted in the direction of respecting the autonomy of local governments, and should be able to create a functional complement of synergy. In addition, the central government and establish inter-municipal cooperative governance is key to the success of the HOPE policy. This study showed concrete policy alternatives for the service providers, collaborative supply of life, the use of quality services, diagnostics and performance evaluation, building local policy implementation system.