住民生活満足度の地域間格差に影響する要因
—— 山形と山口の市町村データによる共分散構造分析 ——

抄録

People may feel inequality via not only economic level but also a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Social indexes shown by the satisfaction and fulfillment levels should be key factors to analyze regional inequality.
This study aimed to show factors causing regional satisfaction gaps by the structural equation model (SEM) with statistics and questionnaire surveys from towns in Yamagata and Yamaguchi Prefectures.
Results demonstrated the following features. First, the economic situations and social capital (represented by trust, altruistic moral and human network) are both important factors with positive effects on the satisfaction level, but there is a trade-off between these effects. Hence, regional economic gaps can be alleviated by social capital that is highly maintained in less favored areas. Second, public facilities can increase satisfaction levels as long as these facilities are built based on the consensus and needs of residents. Third, economic factors and public facilities directly increase the satisfaction level, whereas effects of social capital are relatively indirect, affecting satisfaction through other factors. The same tendency was seen in both prefectures, so these factors may be general in Japan.
As shown by the above results, the SEM approach with cross sectional data obtained from statistics as well as questionnaires is useful and can reveal general relationships existing in the social structure. Such analyses can reinforce the results of case studies.

JEL classification: O15, R11, R15, R53, R58