A System Dynamics Insight to Institutional context Analysis of groundwater resources in Rafsanjan Plain

Unsustainable use of groundwater resources caused drop in the water table and then has had widespread socio-ecological effects throughout the country. Different approaches have been studied by researchers to control the crisis. Most of those studies focus on engineering aspects, while in the principles of the integrated water resources management; it is emphasized on interdisciplinary approaches. Dealing with the problem of decrease of water table in Rafsanjan, thie paper examines the effects of the institutional context in the formation of such problems. Therefore, using the causal loop diagrams, the paper aims to analyze the factors related to the institutional context of groundwater resources in the regional and national scales. At the regional scale, with a focus on groundwater resources of Rafsanjan, dynamic structures were identified. In the national scale, the role of "formal rules" in reinforcing the growth dynamics was evaluated. The results suggest an overshoot and collapse mechanism dominate in the regional scale where the institutional context has not been capable of controlling the growth dynamics, but reinforced the growth dynamics through the mechanisms of "Shifting the burden ", "Eroding goals ", and "Fixes that fail ".