Cheongju-si was a traditionally good city to live, with pleasant natural environment. However, recent deterioration of ambient air has negatively affected its life environment. The life environment, an index space of activities, provides all things necessary for survival of our society. Modern society developed after industrialization, is exposed to various and serious crisis which human society have never experienced so far, and structurally enters into risk one.
Faced with the life environment crisis, in modern society, it is local governments that are primarily responsible for securing citizens'' safety. Desirable local governments should actively protect citizens from such a crisis. The citizens'' quality of life may significantly vary depending on local government''s roles and behaviors against a new type of life environment crisis occurring in modern society.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to propose qualitative changes of the life environment policies in Cheongju-si and alternatives for them by deriving improvement factors for reforming environment policies from life environment problems in Cheongju-si and understanding importance of them. In order to explore improvement factors for managing the life environemnt crisis, literature analysis, AHP analysis and empirical survey were used.
The findings are as follows. It is proved that risk perceptions have effects on the satisfaction with local governments'' environment policies. In particular, a test of hypothesis on the relationship between risk perception and local government''s environment policies shows that current crisis types in Cheongju-si, such as yellow dust, fine dust and landfill of solid waste, and intangible life environment crisis areas have strong explanatory power.
From an analysis on environment policy improvement factors and their relative importance, measured by professionals in local governments, environment policy improvement factors and environmental network activity factors are found to be more important. Among them, reinforcement of related agencies''s participation support factors for environmental network activity factors and local governments'' and their heads'' will are important.
On the basis of the findings, following political suggestions can be summarized. First, the life environment crisis requires local characteristics-specific prevention and preparation-based political management. Second, the management policy of life environment crisis needs socio-demographic-specific education and information disclosure. Third, the life environment crisis requires the establishment of cooperation networks between regions. Such a cooperation between regions are necessary, since the life environment crisis affects not only a region, but also other neighboring countries.
Theoretical implications regarding the life environment crisis in this study are as follow:
First, while previous studies of crisis managements have often examined traditional crises of military security, national disaster, human disaster, national key infrastructure and social conflict, this study investigated the public''s risk perceptions and political issues. This extends the previous range of studies on types and policies of the risk management.
Second, this study has a significant implication in that it proves the relationship between citizens'' risk perceptions and local governments'' risk management policies.
Third, it also has an important implication, in that it comprehensively investigated general citizens'' risk perceptions and professional areas which previous papers have rarely engaged, and it examine risk perceptions and local governments'' risk management policies as variables.