The Study of Sustainable Rural Development in Taiwan—A Perspective of Causality Relationship

From the perspective of sustainable development and based on literature review, this paper introduces modified Delphi and Decision Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to explore the critical factors of sustainable development in rural areas and their correlation. Through literature review and modified Delphi analysis, nine key factors of rural sustainable development are first identified, namely industrial activation, working environment, living conditions, infrastructure, public involvement, rural culture, government-related departments, educational resources, and health and welfare. DEMATEL is then adopted to determine the classification of the aforementioned factors, in which four (government-related departments, public involvement, infrastructure, and educational resources) are classified in the cause group and five (health and welfare, living conditions, rural culture, working environment, and industrial activation) are classified in the effect group. According to the centrality and relation of these factors, the causal network diagram is finally drawn before making practical suggestions based on the overall results, with a view to providing a reference for decision-makers in their follow-up rural sustainable development planning.