Rural Amenity Survey and Evaluation

Abstract

In the process industrialization and urbanization in Korea, rural area has been degraded with incurable problems including community aging and destruction of ancient cultural or natural rural amenities. However, the tangible and intangible resources in rural areas has highlighted in these days since the life quality elevated. Rural Amenity, the rural resources that give affection and agreeable feelings, is regarded as a solution that can revitalize the rural community. Therefore, Rural Development Administration (RDA) has been conducting nation-wide survey project for rural amenity resources to construct the databases of rural amenity distribution and richness. In this article, the survey project that was implemented from 2005 through 2009 was narrated in terms of methods and procedures. And, using surveyed data from the project, this study was implemented to evaluate rural amenity values based on Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method considering living aspect and tourism aspect. For defining the set of evaluation criteria, rural amenity resources were classified into natural resources, cultural resources and social resources. The criteria’s weights were evaluated from the step wise pair-comparison results by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. The two aspects evaluation method was applied to the selected 18 towns (called eup or myeon in Korea) in Chungcheongbuk-do. The results demonstrated the differences of amenity values as living conditions or tourism conditions.