Abstract

Rural areas face constant increase of partially used rural social infrastructure (hereinafter referred to as RSI) facilities, coordination of which shows insufficient level of description and professionalism, functions performed by RSI organisations are not aligned. As a result of a bad situation of rural social infrastructure, small rural areas face with decline. The research aim – having theoretically analysed the factors that determine social infrastructure development, to make the analysis of RSI situation and the analysis of the factors that influence development in Lithuanian rural regions. The following objectives have been solved: analysed theoretically the factors determining the development of the rural social infrastructure; analysed the condition of RSI and the factors influencing upon its development in Lithuanian rural regions. The research methods are the survey and the analysis of the scientific literature, scientific literature systemization, matching and comparison, multiple-criteria statistical data analyses and syntheses, expert evaluation. Integrated RSI condition indicators were calculated for each municipality and compared with indicators established for other municipalities in order to determine the RSI development level of each region. Analysis’ results showed that the sector of communications and telecommunications is valued best, while the sector of protection of persons and property is assessed worst. Bad RSI situation is observed in 35.29 percent Lithuanian municipalities. There is no rural territory, showing perfect level of RSI development. This permits to draw a conclusion about the differences of the situation of the whole infrastructure system and social-economic problems. Problems of territorial and social cohesion are formed due to the uneven RSI development in individual regions/municipalities. Regions/municipalities with poor RSI lags behind the needs of local population are less attractive for investments, settling down, living, resting, such areas show higher unemployment rate, lower disposable incomes of households, residents are forced into a corner, limited sustainable development, and weak local economy.

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