Rural Policy Makers Research Articles

Partition of regional types on rural household energy consumption of province-level regions in China

In order to classify regional types of rural household energy consumption (RHEC) in China, this paper selects the following as the characteristic indices for regional classification: per-capita available heat consumption for cooking and heating per day (PCAHC), annual per-capita electricity consumption for livelihood (PCEC), ratio of commercial energy in PCAHC (RCE), per-capita energy consumption of coal equivalent (PCECOCE), per-capita commercial energy consumption (PCCEC), per-capita income (PCI) and average annual temperature (AAT), etc. By using cluster analysis, this thesis divides the surveyed regions into five different types, according to the similarities of their characteristic indices made out through analysing national statistical data of rural household energy consumption; it also describes the main characteristics of each region, which provides a reference for rural energy policy-making and research on regional differences.

The Evolution of Knowledge Networks: An Example for Rural Development

Knowledge management practices have had a huge impact on the private sector, and no doubt the principles grounded in knowledge management will benefit communities as they build social and organizational networks to further their community development goals. This paper explores the role of knowledge management within community development practice and describes how a knowledge network support tool was implemented in a professional community of rural development practitioners in Illinois. Communityware software, 1K.NOW RURAL DEVELOPMENT, presented a dynamic online environment for documenting and evaluating the evolution of a knowledge network within the community of interest. The software was used to survey rural development practitioners and policy-makers about the scope of their professional relationships (with other members of the network), their individual skill sets, and their areas of expertise. More than 140 individuals participated in this activity, exposing a broad network with little shared knowledge. This paper provides insight to the value of knowledge management tools and their role in policy creation for rural issues.

都市・農村の新しい連携 交流から共生へ 都市・農村交流施設整備の現段階

For the promotion of rural-urban interactions, a plenty of recreational facilities have been constructed in rural areas of Japan. Now, the facility improvement stands in need of“systematization”. In each construction project, composite improvement has already come to be the mainstream. However, in order to produce fully the effects of composite improvement, “regional management system ”that performs environmental design and marketing needs to be developed in view of a set of facilities within the region. For the purpose of putting the system into practical form, it is recommended that rural policymakers should examine the introduction of such an innovative park system as Parc Naturel Regional in France.

Attitudes towards traffic problems and public transport in the Dartmoor and Lake District National Parks

Problems associated with traffic demand have received only scant attention in the rural context and, although accepted as a viable approach to ameliorating urban traffic problems, traffic demand management has only recently been adopted by rural policy makers. In the national parks, where traffic-related problems are particularly acute, most traffic management measures are of the ‘carrot’ varity where attempts are made to persuabe private car passengers to use public transport transpon mobes, their success depends on tne attitudes of private car users towards public transport alternatives and their perceptions of the presence scale and impact of traffic-related problems. By analysing surveys of 768 drivers hr the Entamoor and Lake District National Parks, the potential success of ‘carrot’ measures is assessed and the implications for future policy addressed.

Rural government and community participation: The planning role of community councils

Since April 1996, Wales has possessed one principal tier of local government: 22 unitary authorities. Below this tier of administration, a second level exists: community and town councils. The statutory duties of these authorities are severely limited but they do perform a valuable advisory and consultative role with the principal authorities, particularly in rural areas. The recent reorganization of Welsh local government has prompted commentators to reconsider whether community councils could be afforded more statutory powers in rural governance. This paper discusses the potential for enhancing their role within one service area, namely the planning process. Planning is a function of local government where changes to responsibilities could be enacted. The paper discusses the findings of two research projects: first, a survey of senior planning officers in Wales towards awarding planning powers to community councils; and secondly, a more detailed examination of the perceptions of community councils in rural mid-Wales towards their powers and duties, their planning links with the principal authorities, and their duties within local communities to generate public involvement in rural policy-making. It argues that allocating planning responsibilities to community and town councils lacks the support of both planning professionals and community council representatives themselves. However, in the dual-push for unitary councils to operate both strategically and locally, there is further scope for a reorientation of rural policy-making and for local planning authorities to provide more extensive consultation opportunities to the councils.

Spatial scale-dependent policy planning for land management in southern Europe

This study outlines and original tool for rural policy planning in southern Europe. This new tool is a process-based, scale-dependent, rural policy-making approach, which is designed to address increasing land degradation problems in southern Europe. Seven important processes are identified (land abandonment, devegetation, intensification in agriculture, global climate change, accelerated soil erosion, increasing water demands, urbanisation) and plotted on a space-time diagram, which clearly shows the spatial and temporal scales for which these processes are significant for landscape change in southern Europe. Conclusions are derived concerning, in particular, sustainable (optimal) rural policy-making for southern Europe's problematic land management. An optimal spatial-temporal scale for land management in southern Europe may range spatially from the "farm" (0.5 km(2)) to "sub-provincial" level (450 km(2)) and temporally from 7 to 30 years. The study delineates methods and results derivable from such a new policy-planning approach and suggests the usefulness of combining this approach with ecological land classification at the landscape level.

Studying the retention of rural physicians.

Rural communities and policy-makers struggle with efforts to enhance the retention of rural physicians. Research available to guide these efforts is often weak methodologically and thus may be pointing retention efforts in nonproductive directions. This article discusses a range of methodologic issues encountered in rural physician retention studies for the purpose of strengthening future studies. Ideal study approaches to answer causal questions, including questions about the "causes" of rural physician retention, must demonstrate good internal validity, for which chance, bias, and confounding are accounted. Retention studies that rely simply on asking physicians why they stay or leave rural areas can be useful at times, but are too prone to bias and their findings difficult to verify. Simply identifying what physicians find satisfying or dissatisfying about rural work also will not reliably reveal why they stay or leave, a related but still distinct question. Stronger approaches to studying retention include the traditional quantitative study--in which retention factors are identified when they are statistically related to physicians' retention, and the increasingly popular qualitative study--in which retention issues are revealed through prolonged, in-depth interactions with physicians. This article also discusses various definitions of retention, the use of survival curves to present retention findings, and the importance of studying retention in inception cohorts. The benefits and downside of studying retention with prospective and retrospective study designs are described.

Farm Women's Groups: Feminist or Farming or Community Groups, or New Social Movements?

The feminist movement is one of social change. The Canadian Farm Women's Network (CFWN) is in many respects a feminist movement and a movement of social change. It has a stated dual mandate of promoting rural community life and sustaining the farm family, while also increasing the recognition of female farm labour, and increasing representation of women on farming boards and in official farming statistics. The CFWN is active at the community and provincial level in most provinces. Promoting rural community life and the farm family calls, on the one hand, for the continued exploitation of women through undervalued voluntary community services and the provision of an invisible unrecognised farm labour force. On the other hand the very existence of a successful, visible farm women's group dispels the traditional silent role of farm women on farming issues and that part of its mandate which calls for increased female representation in farming activities and organisations calls for radical social change in farming circles. The many different aspects of these groups has led to difficulties of correct `categorisation' for sociologists, rural policy makers, funding agencies and feminists. These apparent `contradictions' are not incompatible for farm women however, and it is argued here that greater sensitivity to this is necessary on the part of academics and policy makers so that they assist rather than impede the activities of farm women.

The Environmental Context of Poverty Among Older Residents of Economically Endangered Kansas Towns

This article reports results of a field study of the impact of acute and chronic economic stressors on elderly residents of four economically threatened small towns in Kansas. Guided by a conceptual model of environmental stress, risks and benefits associated with everyday life m these towns for older residents are explored for four issues: health risks, the health/housing dialectic, maintaining psychological control, and risks to community identity. Psychological and behavioral strategies employed by older residents as well as communities to deal with changes in these areas are illustrated. It is suggested that community intervention models (e.g., community development, empowerment, triage, or hospice) attempting to stabilize, rejuvenate, or resurrect economically endangered towns must consider a variety of context-specific needs and resources within and between communities. Recommendations for intervention are offeredfor rural practitioners (health professionals, community planners, housing experts) and policymakers.

Uneven Development in North Carolina? Job Quality Differences Between Local and Nonlocal Firms1

Abstract Do outside firms come to North Carolina or, more generally, to the rural South to take advantage of the low‐wage unorganized local relations of production? Do they disrupt local labor market arrangements? We use data from a survey of North Carolina employees to examine labor market and job quality differences between local and outside firms and also the organization of regional labor markets. Results, based on multiple regression models, suggest that outside firms provide higher quality jobs, mediated by organizational resources and internal firm relations of production. Urban Piedmont labor markets provide better jobs than rural labor markets, regardless of the establishment's ownership locale. Generally, uneven development predictions are supported by additive models, but challenged by additional analyses of interactions. These analyses suggest that outside firms may be undermining local relations of production in rural North Carolina. Results of this research present rural policymakers with a challenge for future economic development strategies.

Rural Public Administration: Problems and Prospects. Edited by Jim Seroka (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986. 208 p. $37.50).

In compiling this collection of previously unpublished essays, Seroka was prompted by several concerns about current administrative responses and opportunities for change in rural areas. Specfically, these concerns were that the rural renaissance has placed administrative offices and officials in affected governmental units under severe and unanticipated stress; that rural policy programs require specific considerations which are divided from urban-based programs; and that rural governmental units must be studied flexibly, and not as a single monolithic block. Particular subjects discussed include the theory of rural administrative change, rural administration in the township, administration under boom and bust circumstances, policy variations in rural areas, the impact of intergovernmental fundings on rural policymaking, and policy limitations and constraints on rural public administration. The volume is divided into four distinct units. In the first, alternate models for rural public administration are introduced. In the second, the rural administrative environment is defined and described. The third examines particular rural administrative responses to immediate and specific problems. In the fourth part the editor offers an overall assessment of rural public administration research.

Attitudes of Rural County Leaders in the United States Towards Intergovernmental Cooperation

The intent of this paper is to describe and explain attitudes of U.S. rural county policymakers toward intergovernmental relations. This paper examines rural policy-maker attitudes towards regional, state and federal intergovernmental relations. Second, it measures the variation in attitudes which may occur among rural policy-makers towards intergovernmental cooperation. Third, it explains the variation in attitudes towards intergovernmental relations by identifying and testing several of the prevailing theoretical explanations. The analysis reveals that county socio-economic characteristics and personal leader backgrounds are weak determinants of attitudes towards intergovernmental cooperation, while the state and particularly the local political environment help explain variation in attitudes towards intergovernmental cooperation.

Rural Policy-Making and the Location of Public Facilities

In this paper a new formal approach has been offered to assist in the comparison and selection of a policy for a rural region, given a set of feasible policies. The specific policy problem which is addressed concerns the selection of locations for a public facility (for example, a school or a health centre) given a set of feasible locations in a rural region. The good is only available at the chosen locations. The introduction to the paper provides a review on the role of quantitative evaluation in rural policy making. It is argued that a complete evaluation of a public location policy should include both public and private costs which are incurred in the provision and consumption of public goods and services. Comments on some recent social choice literature are offered.The approach involves the analysis of an impact matrix using concordance and multi-dimension scaling techniques. The matrix contains information on the set of alternate locations and the impacts on a set of criteria. The criteria refer to equity and efficiency effects. The analysis allows a classification of the alternate locations, and by incorporating an ideal or hypothetical location into the initial matrix, the classification can be interpreted to identify the relative attractiveness of the locations. To illustrate this approach a hypothetical example is used. Given arural region and a set of five settlements, the problem is to identify the best set of three settlements to receive a public facility. The set of five is derived intuitively from a larger set of twenty settlements. For each location a set of seven criteria are used. The analysis indicates that, of the tenpolicies, two appear to be most satisfactory. For these policies the settlements which receive facilities are identified.In conclusion it should be noted that this approach allows a variety of data to be included and a number of sensitivity analyses can be conducted. The purpose is to improve the quality of the debate among interested parties on the search for appropriate locations for public facilities in rural areas.