9 out of 10 Seongdong Residents Express Pride

Seongdong-gu Receives 94.7% Positive Response for 'Doing Well', Over 80% Positive Ratings in 12 Key Policy Areas
Seongdong Residents' Sense of Efficacy in Local Governance is About Twice the National Average, with 90.3% Expressing Pride in Being Seongdong Citizens

Seongdong-gu, Seoul (Mayor Jeong Wono) announced the results of the 2023 regular public opinion survey. In response to the question about the overall evaluation of district policies, 94.7% answered that the district is "doing a good job," confirming that more than 9 out of 10 residents gave a positive evaluation of the district administration. Seongdong-gu has been conducting annual public opinion surveys on district administration since 2015.

Looking at the evaluation by 12 major policy areas in Seongdong-gu, the highest positive response rate was for cultural policies at 95.4%, followed by ▲transportation policies 93.2%, ▲health and public medical policies 93.0%, ▲smart administration policies 92.6%, ▲environmental policies 92.5%, ▲welfare policies 91.3%, ▲disaster and safety policies 90.8%, ▲housing and urban policies 89.1%, ▲resident communication policies 88%, ▲childcare policies 84.6%, ▲education support policies 83.6%, and ▲job policies 83%.

Regarding the policy tasks to be prioritized in the future, "housing and urban policies" received the highest response at 26.1%, followed by ▲job policies 17.3% and ▲education support policies 9.9%.

An additional analysis to identify factors contributing to the high evaluation of district administration showed that policy-specific evaluations had a greater impact on the overall evaluation than differences in residents’ socioeconomic characteristics such as age, education, or occupation. In other words, Seongdong-gu residents appear to desire policy- and performance-centered administration.

The survey also investigated the sense of efficacy that Seongdong-gu residents feel toward the district administration. The proportion of respondents who answered "I influence what Seongdong-gu Office does" was 60.7%. Additionally, 69.3% responded that "Seongdong-gu Office values my opinion," indicating that more than 6 out of 10 residents have a high sense of efficacy toward the district office.

This is about twice as high as the nationwide response rates (37.6% and 34.2%, respectively) from the voter perception survey after the National Assembly election (Korea Research, 2020), which asked the same questions about government efficacy.

Regarding a more direct indicator of district administration efficacy, more than half of respondents (51.5%) agreed with the statement, "When I experience inconvenience in my daily life, I can always talk to Seongdong-gu Office and get it resolved." Also, 90.3% responded positively to the statement, "I am proud to be a resident of Seongdong-gu," confirming not only a high sense of efficacy but also a strong pride as Seongdong-gu residents.

Korea Research, which conducted the survey, analyzed the 2023 regular public opinion survey results as follows: Although housing, job, and education policies, which were selected as top priorities, are areas where the central government plays a major role, they are issues that meet the needs of Seongdong-gu residents, so active intervention by the central government is necessary. Also, since residents’ evaluations of individual policy areas have a significant impact, more attention should be paid to the implementation of each policy. Furthermore, the high sense of efficacy among Seongdong-gu residents is inferred to be based on communication, so a virtuous cycle of policy communication and policy evaluation is expected.

Jeong Wono, Mayor of Seongdong-gu, said, "I sincerely thank the residents for expressing high pride in living in Seongdong, and I will do my best to meet their expectations."

This survey was commissioned by Seongdong-gu Office to Korea Research and conducted through face-to-face interviews with 800 adult men and women aged 18 or older residing in Seongdong-gu from July 27 to August 25 this year. The maximum allowable sampling error at a 95% confidence level is ±3.46%p.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.