The model of a sufficiency economy philosophy with socioeconomics of rural community’s households, Northeastern Thailand

Abstract

The objectives of this research were 1) to develop and validate the structural equation model of application of the sufficiency economy philosophy with socioeconomics of rural community households, 2) to study the importance scale of each of the observed variables with socioeconomics and the sufficiency economy philosophy of rural community households, and 3) to study the correlation level between the sufficiency economy philosophy and socioeconomics of rural community households. The main focus of this study was on rural community households. Simple random sampling technique was used to arrive at 400 samples, and a questionnaire was administered to collect data and analyzed by descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and structural equation model analysis. The result showed that the model was consistent with the empirical data. Goodness of fit measures were found to be: Chi-square 52.37(p- value= 0.15491). It was also found that the factor loading of socioeconomics with the highest point was the consumption expenditure at 0.68, whereas the factor loading of the sufficiency economy philosophy with the highest point was the criterion of moderation at 0.66. Besides, it was found that the rural community households’ behavior of applying the sufficiency economy philosophy received direct influence from the socioeconomic factors at the point of 0.12.