Factors on Community Livability and Local Government Policy in the Rural Area in Japan

This study examines how Akita citizens view their local government policy on 1) Industry and Production, 2) Medical/Welfare, 3) Education, 4) Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 5) Regional activation, 6) Transportation/Conveniences, and their relationships with community livability by using data from “Citizens Awareness Survey” conducted by Akita local government in 2016. Results show that Akita citizens feel that policy on “Depopulation”, “Medical/Welfare”, “Education” and “Industry/Production” have influence on community livability. However, policies on Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Regional activation, and Transportation/Convenience are negative influence on community livability.

Hypotheses which measure Akita people's feeling toward their prefectural government's administrative policies, and how they are related to community livability are as follows.
H1. Local government policy on Depopulation/Parenting is closely related to community livability H2. Local government policy on Medical/Welfare is closely related to community livability H3. Local government policy on Education is closely related to community livability H4. Local government policy on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Regional activation and Transportation/Convenience is closely related to community livability H5. Local government policy on Industry and Production is closely related to community livability

Data
The data used for this study was provided by Akita Prefectural Government, General Policy Division, which has conducted a questionnaire survey to their citizens every year since 2010. The survey for this study was sent by mail, by Akita local government, from June 16, 2016 to July 12, 2016.
Questionnaires were mailed to 4,000 male and female over twenty-year old that live in Akita. -year-old, and older than 70-year-old. The sample may be overrepresented younger residents, as well as those in 50 to 59-year-old, while the septuagenarian and older residents are under-represented. Table 3 contains the Pearson correlation coefficient between all pairs of twenty-one variables with the two-tailed significance of these coefficients. All variables correlate well and statistically significant, and none of the correlation coefficients are particularly large; therefore, multicollinearity is not a problem for these data.

The Structural Equation Model Analysis
Based on a survey of 2,002 respondents from people who live in Akita prefecture in 2016, the study employs a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach.
The efficacy of the structural equation model was conducted by AMOS 24, and the major result of analysis is shown in Figure 2. The path diagram highlights the structural relationships. In this diagram, the measured variables are enclosed in boxes, latent variables are circled, and arrows connecting two variables represent relations, and open arrows represent errors. When SEM is used to verify a theoretical model, a greater goodness of fit is required for SEM analysis (Bentler, 1990), the better the fit, the closer the model matrix and the sample matrix. By means of various goodness-of-fit indexes, including the comparative fit index (CFI) (Bollen, 1989), Incremental Fit Index (IFI) (Browne & Cudeck, 1993), and the root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) (Browne & Cudeck, 1993), the estimated matrix can be evaluated against the observed sample covariance matrix to determine whether the hypothesized model is an acceptable representation of the data. In general, fit indexes (i.e., CFI, IFI) above 0.90 signify good model fit.
RMSEA values lower than 0.05 indicative of good model fit. Since all of indexes satisfy the cut-off values, these results are regarded as acceptable. Indicators of goodness of fits for this model are CFI=0.951, IFI=0.951, and RMSEA=0.042. Path Coefficient for the structural model suggested that the regression coefficient for all constructs show significance (see Table 5). See a list of reliability tests on Table 4. Since all indexes satisfy the cut-off values, these results are regarded as acceptable.

Results of Hypotheses
The followings are results of hypotheses.
H1. There is a weak but significant, positive relationship between local government policy on Depopulation and community livability H2. There is a weak but significant, positive relationship between local government policy on Medical and Welfare and community livability H3. There is a weak but significant, positive relationship between local government policy on Education and community livability H4. There are weak but significant, negative relationships between local government policy on Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Regional activation, and Transportation/Convenience and community livability H5. There is a weak but significant, positive relationship between local government policy on

Industry and Production and community livability
Results of all hypotheses, except H4, are statistically positive and significant, standardized path coefficients. All standardized path coefficients are between 0.10 and 0.20 may indicate "small" or "weak" effects. Small or weak effects indicate that there is minimal relationship between each of local government policy and community livability. Planners and policymakers of the local government concerned with creating or maintaining livable cities have long invoked "livability" as a guiding principle for the investment and decision-making that shape the rural social, economic, physical and biological environment (Benzeval, Judge, & Whitehead, 1995;Hills, 1995;Pacione, 1982Pacione, , 2003. This survey data offers important insights into how people in Akita perceive their local area, what they value in a community, what they think the local area offers, and what it's missing, helping to shape policy and planning responses in areas ranging from health and economic development to housing and infrastructure. This survey respondents seem to report their local governments took fewer actions to advance livable communities.

Conclusions
In this study, authors clarified the relationships between policies of Akita local government and community livability using data from "Citizens Awareness Survey 2016". The official Akita government's homepage states that the survey results will be appropriately used for policy evaluation and for the progress management of policies and measures (Akita prefecture, 2016). Based on "Livability" related questionnaires in this survey, the authors explore the factors influencing the livability of people in Akita prefecture. The results in this study show that Akita citizens feel that policies on "Depopulation", "Medical/Welfare", "Education" and "Industry/Production" have influence on community livability in some extent. However, Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Regional activation, and Transportation/Convenience are negative influence on community livability. Akita prefecture, located in the northern part of Japan, has a serious problem on decreasing population. The population decline due to the outflow of young generation negatively affects the regional economy, which also affect the labor market structure. Akita's economy remains dominated by traditional industries, such as agriculture, fishing, and forestry, and many young people continue migrating to larger cities. It seems that Akita citizens would like to ask their local government to act more positively in these areas, and the local government need to propose innovative solutions for making these traditional industries more attractive to younger generations, for example.

Q1_1_1
Strengthening the management foundation of companies and efforts to promote regional industries Q1_1_2 Education of companies leading Akita and efforts to develop new business Q1_1_3 Efforts to establish new energy, environment and recycling industry base Q1_1_4 Expanding overseas transactions and efforts to form industrial bases Q1_1_5 Efforts to foster human resources supporting Akita's industry Q1_2_1 Efforts to expand brand agriculture to tackle with "All Akita" Q1_2_2 Promotion of full utilization of paddy field centering on Akita rice Q1_2_3 Promotion of sixth industrialization that creates added value and employment Q1_2_4 Fostering highly competitive management entities leading regional agriculture Q1_2_5 Promotion of the nationwide largest lumber comprehensive processing area Q1_2_6 Establishment of marine product brand and development of new fishery business Q1_3_1 Promotion of tourism as a comprehensive strategic industry that will continue and grow Q1_3_2 The polish of Akita's food attractiveness and efforts to expand sales channels outside the prefecture Q1_3_3 Regional energy creation by improving different cultural capabilities of Akita Q1_3_4 Promotion of "Atsuta Sports Aichi Prefecture" Q1_3_5 Promoting the development of a road network that forms the skeleton of the prefecture Q1_3_6 Improvement of convenience of transportation network and securing of regional traffic Q1_4_1 Promotion of health promotion that can live healthy and long Q1_4_2 Enhancing and strengthening the medical provision system that protects life and health Q1_4_3 Creating a system to support elderly people and people with disabilities in the community Q1_4_4 Efforts for comprehensive suicide prevention measures that civil, scholarly, and government integrated Q1_5_1 Training personnel who will open up their own future and contribute to society Q1_5_2 Establishing certain academic ability and cultivating creativity and expressive power Q1_5_3 Fostering a rich heart and a healthy body Q1_5_4 A good and attractive place to learn Q1_5_5 Creating opportunities for familiarizing with lifelong learning environment for arts and culture Q1_5_6 Enhancement of higher education and promotion of regional contribution Q1_5_7 Training human resources who can be active in the global society Q1_6_1 Efforts to settle in Akita, expand migration and settlement Q1_6_5 Improvement of regional power by making use of local human resources and resources Q1_6_6 Efforts to revitalize the region based on a population declining society Q1_6_7 Securing diverse workers and promoting activities of "collaboration" Q1_6_8 Promotion of cooperation between prefecture and municipality Q1_6_2 Promotion of countermeasures against declining birthrate that became unified public and private Q1_6_3 Enhancement and enhancement of support for the next generation Q1_6_4 Improvement of enviroment for children's birth and raising children Livability Q3_7 What do you think about the livability in your area?     (Wheaton et al., 1977)~2.0 (Tabachnick and Fidell, 2007) 3.875 CFI >0.90 (Bentler, 1990) 0.951 IFI >0.90 ( Bollen, 1989) 0.951 RM SEA <0.08 (Browne and Cudeck,1993) 0.042 AIC Smaller values suggest a good fitting (Akaike, 1974) 2499.072 p-value >0.05 0.000   Vol. 4, No. 4, 2020 Published by SCHOLINK INC.
Akita local government have been newly budgeted 37 projects in 2020 (Akita prefecture, 2020), from Youth activity platform construction project, Akita food industry activation measures project, Rice field agricultural comprehensive measures project for the next generation, to IoT implementation practice project for manufacturing industry. In some way, the progresses of these projects are seeable may help their citizen understand their local government efforts on livability.