Abstract
Living environments in rural area have become deteriorated rapidly. Increase of aging population, decline in agricultural income, polarization of wealth in rural community due to rural returners have caused severe decline and imbalance of living environments in rural area. Responding to this circumstances, governments currently develop projects for improving living environments focusing on individual housing which were excluded from governmental supports because those had been regarded as private property. Nevertheless, there are still some gaps and problems in evaluating the quality of living environment and suggesting effective solutions. It would be because standards and guidelines of the projects have been based on urban housing system. In order to support the implementation of the projects, this research has developed an index for evaluating and monitoring the quality of living environments in rural area. By applying Delphi method, the index has been created in four categories of 'security', 'convenience', 'comfortability', and 'durability' 'Security' consists of structural safety, crime, disaster, accident prevention. 'Convenience' includes three divisions of living, traffic, farm working. 'Comfortability' is divided into sanitation, indoor environments, and aesthetic appreciation. Lastly, 'durability' has four divisions of energy conservation, environmental friendliness, efficiency, and economics. Each sub-division also has different items from three to twelves. In the case of an index for performance evaluation, items have been derived from energy conservation(6-items), and environmental friendliness(7-items). Items developed as an index for evaluating rural living environments in this research might be good background information for remodeling project in rural housing development.
