Analysis of Urban Agricultural Effects by Factors According to the Urban Citizens Income Level: Socially Sustainable Effect, Negative Effect, and Economically Sustainable Effect

The role of urban agriculture should not be limited as a small-scale crop cultivation activity as it was, but it has to be considered as an entire process of a agriculture activity for the restoration of the city community. This study is based on the assumption that there has been a significant change in urban lifestyle and urban farming preference, considering the overall improvement in standard of living after implementation of five day work week system. It was conducted for urban citizens who were interested in actual urban agriculture for ages 19 and over who visited the Korea Urban Agriculture Exhibition in 2018. Only 115 valid samples were used for the empirical analysis. To analyze the demographic characteristics and effects of urban agriculture, frequency analysis and descriptive statistics were conducted. In order to analyze the reliability and validity of the measurement variables of the effect, the variables that deteriorate the validity were removed and 15 variables of the urban agricultural effect were selected. According to the result of factor analysis, three factors were extracted as follows: socially sustainable effect, negative effect and economically sustainable effect. In order to examine the effects of urban agriculture depending on income level, the one-way ANOVA, which is a statistical technique for verifying differences in the sample means, was performed. The psychological stability of people, the recovery of humanity through communion with nature, and the vitalization of agriculture linked with local agriculture had significant correlations with income level. The negative effect showed no significant correlation with income level. The improvement of the local environment was found to have an impact in relation with income level. We expect that there will be more studies on policies for the new types and models of urban agriculture in order to make it easier for urban citizens to approach it.