(The) Impacts of Community Participation on the Performance of Rural Development Cooperation Project : an Empirical Study on the Saemaul Undong Project in Myanmar

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

There have been reflections that poverty eradication cannot be achieved through the continued expansion of existing development cooperation programs. As a result, the need for active participation of beneficiary country and communities has emerged. The participation of local communities and residents, who are the direct beneficiaries and subjects of development cooperation projects, was discussed as both a means and an end to project implementation and as an essential success factor of the project. The community participation is more effective in agriculture and rural development than in other areas of development cooperation. With half of the world's population living in rural areas, most of them in developing countries, rural community development is one of the most critical areas for achieving the SDGs aimed at inclusive development. Therefore, there has been a sustained interest in the impacts of community participation on the performance of rural development cooperation projects.
While the pros and cons of beneficiary community participation continue to be debated, many studies have found that development projects are more effective when communities are involved in the project implementation process. While theoretical discussions on the impact of community participation in international development cooperation projects continue, empirical research on this topic is relatively scarce. This research aims to contribute to fill this gap between theoretical and empirical research. Existing empirical studies have focused on community participation primarily in terms of 'financial contributions'. However, this study considers the various types of rural development cooperation projects and breaks the community participation into participatory activities, in-kind contributions, and financial contributions.
This study examines the relationship between community participation and project performance evaluation through the following three hypotheses: First, the participatory activities of community will have a positive impact on the rural development cooperation project performance. Second, the in-kind contributions of community will have a positive impact on the rural development cooperation project performance. Third, the financial contributions of the community will have a positive impact on the rural development cooperation project performance.
To verify these three hypotheses, this empirical study conducted a multiple regression analysis on the project data of community participation and project performance evaluation from 100 pilot communities in 9 States and Regions of the Myanmar Saemaul Undong (SMU) project. In addition, difference analysis by the general characteristics of the sample communities was conducted to select control variables to be included in the multiple regression model, and to analyze their implications for community participation and project performance variables.
The results show that community meeting, community training, and publicity of communities’ participatory actions have a positive impact on the project performance. Among communities' financial contributions, the operation of the community fund generating increment, which was conducted as an income generation project, had a positive impact on project performance. Among the characteristics of the pilot communities in the sample, there were significant differences in project performance results depending on State and Region groups.
On the other hand, the second hypothesis that in-kind contributions have a positive effect on rural development project performance is rejected. This can be attributed to the different development conditions and needs of the 100 pilot communities, which were selected to be representative of the characteristics of communities across Myanmar. This result suggests that the amount of in-kind contributions alone is not a good enough indicator of the level of community participation and calls for further research to develop a complementary index.
This study was conducted as an empirical study of the Myanmar SMU project, and the applicability of the findings to the entire field of rural development cooperation or other fields should be tested in future research.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• I. Introduction 1
• 1. Background 1
• 2. Research Methods and Structure 3
• II. Theoretical Background 5
• 1. Rural and Community Development 5
• 1.1. Rural Development 5
• 1.2. Community Development 8
• 1.3. Saemaul Undong 12
• 2. Participation and Project Performance 17
• 2.1. Community Participation 17
• 2.2. Participatory Development 21
• 2.3. Community Participation and Project Performance 27
• 3. Literature Review 33
• III. Research Design and Methods 38
• 1. Research Model and Hypotheses 38
• 2. Operational Definition of Variables and Data Collection 40
• 2.1. Operational Definition of Variables 40
• 2.2. Data Collection of Variables 46
• 3. Research Methods 53
• 4. SMU Project in Myanmar 54
• 4.1. Project Rationale 54
• 4.2. Strategy and Implementation System 60
• 4.3. SMU Pilot Communities Development 62
• IV. Research Results 71
• 1. Characteristics of Sample 71
• 2. Differences Analysis by Characteristics of Sample 73
• 2.1. Descriptive Statistics Analysis 73
• 2.2. Standardization of Variables 74
• 2.3. Differences Analysis by Community Characteristics 75
• 3. Multiple Regression Analysis on Project Performance 89
• V. Conclusion 94
• 1. Summary of the Results 94
• 2. Discussion 96
• 3. Limitation of Study and Further Research 103
• References 106
• Acknowledgement 117