Improvement Of Living Environment Research Articles

Enhanced Method for Evaluating Remodeling Floor Plans for Apartment Complexes with an Emphasis on Efficiency and Accuracy

A social issue in Korea has recently emerged regarding the structural performance and living environment improvement of aged apartment houses (i.e., 20 or more years old). The available methods to improve the issues related to aged apartment houses are remodeling and reconstruction, and there is a trend to recommend environmentally friendly remodeling. During the initial design stage of a typical remodeling project, several floor plan drafts are prepared and undergo several revisions to produce the final floor plan. As such, this study aims to develop a program capable of promptly offering quantitative structural guides during the initial design stage, thereby reducing the duration and workforce required to complete the final floor plan. The developed program was utilized to conduct a structural evaluation of five existing apartment complexes in Korea. Subsequently, to validate the usability of the developed program, the accuracy and time efficiency of its evaluation results were compared to those using commercial structural analysis software. While the calculated structural indices showed a variance within 5% between the two programs, there were considerable differences in processing time, at 35 min vs. 8-16 h per building. Therefore, the program developed in this study will be beneficial during the initial design stage, and it will significantly reduce the time, effort, and cost necessary for decision-making in a remodeling project while maintaining accuracy in structural assessment.

The impact of rural living environment improvement programs on the subjective well-being of rural residents in China

Increasing people’s subjective well-being (SWB) remains a critical challenge for all countries. However, few studies have been dedicated to examining the influence of environmental governance programs on SWB, especially in developing and non-democratic societies. This paper aims to fill this void by taking the Rural Living Environment Improvement (RLEI) program in China—the largest rural living environment governance program in history, as an example to understand the role of environmental governance programs in SWB in the world’s biggest developing and non-democratic country. Based on 3747 individual samples from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey database, we found that RLEI can significantly improve rural residents’ SWB. This effect remains significant after using the propensity score matching method and the instrumental variable approach to address potential selection bias and endogenous problems. The indirect analysis shows that RLEI can increase rural residents’ SWB mainly through improving their income, consumption expenditure, and health. Compared with rural sewage and livestock manure RLEI programs, rural waste RLEI program has a greater enhanced impact on rural residents’ SWB. The monetary value of RLEI based on the life satisfaction approach shows that the resulting improvement in rural residents’ SWB created by RLEI is almost equivalent to the effect of household income. While the monetary value of rural sewage, livestock manure, and rural waste RLEI program is equivalent to 1.2, 3.67, and 1.1 times the effect of household income. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that RLEI has a greater positive impact on SWB for junior and old-aged, low-educated, Midwestern and Northeastern, and working rural residents.

Development of Prediction Models for Needs and Resources Service Using Big Data Related to Elderly Care

Objectives: In this study, we aimed to verify the possibility of utilizing the integrated case management big data in Korea to identify the complex care needs of the elderly in the community and link them to appropriate resources through a machine learning-based predictive model. Methods: Three merged datasets were made by combining different combinations of the data from integrated case management, elderly care service, and Community Integrated Care Leading Project conducted in Korea. Due to the issue of multiple selection of the response variables, the analysis considering multi-label classification method was conducted. The performance of the predictive model was evaluated based on the F1 score. Results: (1) ‘Maintaining daily life’ and ‘Health’ labels in the needs, (2) ‘Maintaining physical health’ and ‘food, clothing and shelter’ labels in the problem domain, (3) ‘Physical health’, ‘daily life’, and ‘housing’ labels in the major classification of resources, and (4) ‘meal food support’, ‘disease prevention and health care’, and ‘living environment improvement’ labels in the major classification of resources showed F1 ≥ 0.8. Conclusions: In this study, we verified that the elderly need-resource linkage prediction based on big data for integrated case management was at an appropriate level, and the possibility of supporting integrated case management using this was confirmed.

Research Status, Hotspots, and Trend Analysis of the Rural Living Environment Upgrade in China from 1992 to 2022: A Bibliometric and Narrative Review Analysis

The rural living environment is the foundation of rural ecology and rural residents’ life, and the quality of the rural living environment is directly related to the green and low-carbon development of rural areas and the physical and mental health of rural residents. This article aims to grasp the current situation and of rural living environment improvement research and its various research hotspots, explore research frontiers and trends, and provide crucial theoretical guidance for rural living environment improvement research by searching and analyzing China’ national knowledge infrastructure database (CNKI). The article adopts CiteSpace6.2 bibliometric software and the narrative review method to analyze 1349 papers on rural living environment upgrading in CNKI from 1992 to 2022. Among them, the narrative review collects and analyzes the relevant information on rural living environment improvement to provide the background and content for the relevant arguments. It is found that (1) the rural living environment governance policies can be divided into four stages, namely, the initial stage, policy exploration, policy enhancement, and policy deepening, with the policy system continuously maturing and the governance content becoming clearer; (2) research hot topics can be summarized as research on the connotation and governance model of the rural living environment, research on development status, research on effective evaluation and influential factors, and research on treatment model and technology involving interdisciplinary integration development; (3) the rural living environment upgrade research history can be divided into three periods: before 2004, which was the start-up stage, thus the number of publications was relatively small, and core topics included the transformation of rural toilets and rural domestic sewage treatment; 2004–2017, which is the expansion stage, thus the total amount of literature is increasing yearly, and the research topics are gradually enriched; after 2018, which is the the mature development stage, further clarifying the key tasks of rural living environment upgrades; (4) in the future, it is necessary to keep the focus on research in the four key areas, deepen the research on governance connotation, influential factors, and effect evaluation, explore the typical models of rural living environment construction in China, and provide research guidelines and practical decisions for rural living environment governance.

A Bibliometric Review of Rural Living Environment Improvement Research in China Based on CNKI Database: 1992–2022

Improving the rural living environment has become one of the hot issues in the study of rural revitalization in China. Based on 972 high-quality journal articles, in the database of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), this paper provides a detailed bibliometric review of research on the improvement of the rural living environment in China, from 1992 to 2022. Based on a descriptive statistical analysis of the publication trends, authors, institutions, source journals, and high-frequency keywords of the sample literature, this paper uses cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling analysis to quantitatively analyze the main research fields, hot topics, and improvement directions. The results show, that the study of the improvement of the rural living environment presents a good trend. The main research include six aspects: rural sewage improvement, rural waste management, rural environment collaborative treatment, rural toilet improvement, new rural construction and management, and rural environmental green development. Among them, the research heat and abundance of research results of the first three, is higher than the latter three. To further deepen the research related to the rural living environment improvement in the future, issues such as rural toilet improvement, new rural construction and governance, and green development of rural environment, need more attention.

The Realization Mechanism of Rural Multi-Value Comes from Rural Living Environment Improvement in Mountainous Areas of Western China

The Realization Mechanism of Rural Multi-Value Comes from Rural Living Environment Improvement in Mountainous Areas of Western China

Preference for rural living environment improvement initiatives in China

AbstractThe Chinese government has launched the Rural Living Environment Improvement Initiative (RLEII) to solve the poor living conditions in rural areas. The initiative enhances rural greenery; provides sanitary toilets; and promotes proper disposal of animal manure, sewage, and household waste in rural areas. We collected data using in‐person interviews with 938 rural residents in Xinjiang, China, to elicit their preference, preference intensity, and preference heterogeneity for RLEII. Results indicated that rural residents prefer to see shortcomings of the RLEII addressed. Rural greening construction is identified with the highest preference intensity. We also find significant heterogeneity in rural residents' preferences for each attribute of RLEII. The preference heterogeneity is rooted in the region's economic condition (poor vs. nonpoor region). It is essential to understand rural residents' choice for rural public goods supply and to respect their preference intensity, sequence, and heterogeneity for RLEII to enhance the implementation performance. We discuss the implications of these findings.

The Impact of Organizational Support, Environmental Health Literacy on Farmers’ Willingness to Participate in Rural Living Environment Improvement in China: Exploratory Analysis Based on a PLS-SEM Model

The active participation of farmers is not only a real demand to alleviate the dilemma of “free-rider” in improving the rural living environment but also a requirement of the Times to realize ecological sustainability and rural revitalization. The planning behavior theory tells us that improving farmers’ willingness is an important prerequisite for farmers’ activities. This paper constructs the analysis framework of “organizational support (government and village committee) → environmental health literacy → farmers’ willingness” from the actual practice of government-led rural living environment improvement. Using data from a sample of 1225 farmers in Gansu Province and Jiangsu Province, China, we empirically tested the mechanisms of organizational support on farmers’ willingness to participate in living environment improvement and the mediating effect of environmental health literacy using formative structural equation modeling. The study showed that organizational support positively affected farmers’ willingness to participate, the effect of emotional support was more potent than that of instrumental support, and there were regional differences in the relative effects of government support and village committee support on farmers’ willingness to participate. All four types of organizational support positively affected environmental health literacy, but the degree of the effect differed and showed regional heterogeneity. Among the direct effects of farmers’ environmental health literacy on their willingness to participate, basic skills made the highest contribution, followed by basic ideas and the lowest basic knowledge. Among the indirect effects, basic skills made the most significant contribution in the pathway of organizational support to increase farmers’ willingness to participate through fostering farmers’ environmental health literacy. The results can provide a theoretical basis for government and village committees to policy optimization and improve the system, improve the resource utilization of the government and village committees, improve farmers’ environmental health literacy, and change farmers’ participation attitude.

Analysis of the main problems and causes of the improvement of rural human settlements in China

After the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the country officially introduced the "rural revitalization" strategy. The governance of rural living environment is the key to the "new rural construction", which is of great significance to the construction of beautiful villages and the improvement of farmers' happiness. In the research process, this paper uses literature reading, case analysis, field research and questionnaire survey to discuss the human settlement environment, public governance, sustainable development and other issues. Through the summary of rural human settlement environment governance work, analysis of the existing problems, and according to the problems exposed to further seek solutions. Since the rural living environment began to improve, China's rural ecological environment has been significantly improved, village appearance more clean and beautiful, village planning rationalization, household garbage and sewage have established a series of supporting treatment devices and treatment team, rural living environment improvement has made certain progress. But in the process of rectification, a series of problems have been exposed, such as single main body of participants, weak enthusiasm of peasants, lack of long-term funding sources and long-term scientific regulations.

Residential environment in relation to self-report of respiratory and asthma symptoms among primary school children in a high-polluted urban area

Respiratory disease and its complication are the cause of children deaths worldwide every year. Several epidemiological studies pointed out an association between quality of residential in inner city and risk of children health. However, few studies had been focused in high-polluted urban area in low to middle income countries. A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the association between residential environments and respiratory symptoms including asthma among 658 primary school children living in urban area of Bangkok Thailand. The International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) questionnaire was modified to access symptoms during the past 12 months. Binary logistic regression model was performed. Living near garment and clothing shop is associated with shortness of breath (AOR = 1.846; 95% CI 1.034, 3.297). Vectors in home is related to dry cough at night (AOR = 1.505; 95% CI 1.052, 2.153) and phlegm (AOR = 1.414; 95% CI 1.014, 1.973). Wall dampness is increased odd of having wheezing or whistling (asthma) in the chest (AOR = 1.921; 95% CI 1.141, 3.235). Children age, gender, and a family history of asthma were modified the associations. Our finding may provide strategies focusing on living environment improvement with a specific group of children to address respiratory disease prevention.

Factors Affecting the Sense of Coherence (SOC) for Long-term Evacuees after a Large-Scale Disaster in Japan

Disasters has been occurring frequently all over the world, and an increasing number of people have been forced to continue their evacuation life for a long time. In the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, some people are still unable to return to their homes due to radioactive contamination and are forced to live as evacuees for long periods of time. It is considered a serious public health issue to keep mentality healthy under the stress of living after the disaster. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the factors that affect the sense of coherence (SOC), which is considered as the ability to cope with stress and maintain health, in residents who continue to live as evacuees after a large-scale disaster. The method was a self-administered questionnaire survey of 1,602 long-term evacuees in Japan. Multiple logistic regression analysis was conducted with the high and low SOC score groups as dependent variables in order to identify factors that predicted high and low SOC. The results showed that the SOC tended to decrease in the elderly and those with deteriorating mental health. On the other hand, those who were active in education and hobbies, and those who socialized with their neighbors and friends tended to have the higher SOC. In order to support residents who have been forced to continue living as evacuees for a long period of time, it is important to provide them with psychological and emotional support to prevent them from being emotionally overwhelmed, as well as living environment improvement and economic support. It was suggested that the promotion of resident-led activities that lead to mental relaxation and the introduction of stress reduction methods that can be easily adopted by residents are effective in maintaining mental health.

Rural living environment improvement and rural revitalization

Rural living environment improvement and rural revitalization

Predicting residents’ adoption of living environment improvement practices toward sustainable development: the role of internet use

Improving the living environment through household efforts remains a challenge for many developing countries. Little attention has been given to the role of Internet use in previous studies. Based on the Attitude Behavior Context (A-B-C) theory, this paper builds a theoretical framework where Internet use affects residents’ adoption of living environment improvement practices (LEIPs). Using large-scale household survey data from China, this paper adopts the recursive bivariate probit model to overcome the endogeneity biases and investigate the treatment effects of Internet use on residents’ adoption of integrated flushing toilets (IFT) and centralized disposal of domestic waste (CDDW). The results indicate that Internet use increases the likelihood of adopting IFT and CDDW by 24.5% and 19.0% respectively for Internet users. Besides, the counterfactual results show that the possibility of adopting IFT and CDDW will increase by 28.8% and 26.4% respectively if they use the Internet. Moreover, residents who are female, the CPC members, having more years of education and higher household income are more likely to adopt LEIPs. Additionally, the results show evidence of regional heterogeneity. Overall, the impact of Internet use on LEIPs adoption is larger for residents in less-developed and urban areas. The findings suggest that policies embedded with expanding Internet access shall help to promote the sustainable improvement of residents’ living environment.

Revitalization plans for mountain ecological villages in South Korea

This research was conducted on mountain ecological villages (MEVs) which were established in South Korea since 1995 to identify problems and find ways to revitalize the MEVs. To this end, the construction and operation status of MEVs were investigated. Besides, the structure of major facilities and income sources was analyzed by dividing the types of MEVs into those of living environment improvement (LEI), simple income (SI), and self-reliance base (SRB) types. As a result, the LEI type lacked the number of people to work in the village and the average household income was 59.6% of the total average of MEVs. Also, it was difficult to maintain and manage the village facilities due to the aging of the facilities and insufficient joint revenue generation. And it was difficult to manage the village facilities due to the aging of the facilities and insufficient joint revenue generation. The SI type was generating the number of farming households and non-farming income above the average of the entire MEVs, although the proportion of the laborable population was relatively low. However, seasonal limitations of accommodation facilities, experience programs, and urban and mountain village interchanges were insufficient. The SRB type had a high proportion of the laborable population, a relatively large proportion of the return-to-the-rural population, and the income structure was also diversified. However, it was suffering from a lack of budget for the promotion of the village and the securing of personnel to be in charge continuously. To revitalize the MEVs, income sources will have to be diversified to cover the expenses required to run the village on their own as reinforcement of internal capabilities. Besides, it will need a strategy that can actively utilize the capital and manpower from outside.

Impact of social norms and public supervision on the willingness and behavior of farming households to participate in rural living environment improvement: Empirical analysis based on generalized continuous ratio model

Impact of social norms and public supervision on the willingness and behavior of farming households to participate in rural living environment improvement: Empirical analysis based on generalized continuous ratio model

지역특성을 고려한 기성시가지의 연계적 재생전략 연구

The primary purposes of this study are to suggest a medium-sized regeneration project which includes the excluded small sites near existing regeneration site, to identify urban improvement type which fits local conditions, and to suggest proper regeneration strategies for the improvement type. Main findings of this study are follows. First, the size of the living environment improvement project in urban area should be larger than 3ha and government's incentives are required for parcel merges to make the medium-size project site. Second, independent type of urban regeneration project should consider local characteristics while center-spread type of urban regeneration project should build a center by providing neighborhood facilities and proper housings. Third, urban regeneration project should be able to utilize local assets, such as cultural heritages, natural landscapes, transportation facilities. Fourth, standards for public support should be prepared to improve local competitiveness. Last, further studies are required for urban regeneration system improvement.

韓国商業地域における「マウル・マンダルギ」に関する研究

Since 1990s, Maul-Mandulgi has been carried out for living environment improvement and community regeneration in Korea. Maul-Mandulgi is a new type of community activity of which theme is developing community environment together with citizen's organizations or community experts as well as local people. The purpose of this paper is to analyze active development factor and tasks of Maul-Mandulgi at three business area in Korea. The following results were obtained: The main active development factors are regeneration of public space or street place, and revitalization of business area. There are two types of development process; local people proposal type and public works cooperation type. However, this process remains second question; participation system and activity supporting system.

ハンセン病療養所自由療養地区における患者住宅の平面構成と住み手による自主的改修に関する研究

This study analyzed the original plans of all houses and the process of renovation at an independent ward in a sanatorium for Hansen's disease patients, and clarified how differences of house plans affected the process of living environment improvement. The results are as bellows: 1) The house plans were classified into 6 types. Based on this classification, the features of house scale, construction process and room layout were clarified. 2) Layout of storage spaces affected the direction of house extension. 3) The kitchen and dining areas at houses constructed by the institution were smaller than ones constructed by residents themselves. 4) 90% of three-tatami-mat-rooms were extended, and on the other hand, only 20% of 4.5 tatami-mat-rooms were extended. 5) Because the houses constructed at the later stage were built at the fringe of the site, most of them were easily extended.