The Korea Local Administration Review

This paper is a study of analyzing influence and relational structure betweenfactors of social unification and local society conflict. In order to achieve this purposeof study, we established participation, social trust, and local cohesiveness, whichare factors of local social unification, as independent variables. We also establishedthe level of satisfaction on public service, the civic improvement, citizen’s perceptionsabout their community, and local social conflicts as dependent variables. The localsocial conflicts are set as the end result variable. In order to analyze these relationsof variables and their influencing strengths, we used the data which were surveyedChungju-si residents’ perceptions, and applied the structural path analysis ofstructural equation model with the data. The analysis results showed the followings:1) all of social unification factors significantly influence the level of satisfaction onpublic service, civic improvement, the citizens’ perception about their communities,and local social conflict. 2) Among the variables, social trust is the most influentialvariable and participation is in the next. 3) Relationships among the social unificationfactors showed that participation influenced social trust, and in turn, social trustaffected on social cohesiveness. 4) Relationships among the dependent variablesshowed, in sequence, that the level of satisfaction on public service influenced thecivic improvement, that the civic improvement influenced the citizen’s perceptionsabout their community, and that the citizen’s perceptions about their communityaffected the local social conflicts. In conclusion, it was proposed that enhancing thequantity and quality of public services of local governments was needed to addressthe local social conflicts. We also argued that it was required to improve the socialtrust on the local communities based upon citizen participation.
 □ Keywords: local social conflict, local social unification, social trust, participation,structural path analysis