Public Participation in Community Economic Management

Abstract

The purposes of this article were to 1) study the level of public participation in community economic management, 2) compare the public participation in community economic management by personal factors, and 3) study the relationship between supportive factors and the public participation in the community economic management. The questionnaire and interview data were collected and analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA (F-test), and Correlation

The results indicated that the majority of the respondents were involved in the overall and each aspect of the participation in the community economic management at moderate level. Considering at each aspect, the highest participatory aspect was planning.  Next on down were benefits, problems finding, monitoring and follow-up, and operation, respectively.  The results of the hypothetical testing revealed that the respondents who were from different gender, age, education, marital status and social status had different degrees of participation in community economic management at the statistical significance level of .05. On the other hand, the respondents with different occupation, income and household expenditure had different degrees of participation in community economic management in some areas. It was also found that all supportive factors are positively correlated at moderate level with the respondents’ participation in community economic management at the statistical significance level of .01.  In addition, the relationship sorted from the highest to the lowest were as follows: information perception channel, community economy understanding, information perception and confidence in group, respectively.