Investigating Determinants of Stakeholder's Participation on Rangeland Projects: The Case of Goltape Township, Saqqez County

Natural resources, especially rangelands characteristically provide a context for sustainable development of environment worldwide. Recently, rangeland management projects play an important role in preventing pasture degradation and promote their overall status. Community participation is one of the main factors for any successful range management program. Due to the importance of stakeholder participation in rangeland management projects, this study aimed at investigating determinants of stakeholders’ participation in rangeland projects of Goltape Dehestan, Saqqez county. Thereby, the study employed descriptive causal comparative research design. The statistical population was consisted of beneficiaries in rural pastures (with high and low participation rate in range management projects). The sample was consisted of 175 rural household heads in Gol Tappeh villages.
Structural questionnaires were used to collect data. The questionnaires validity was confirmed by panel of experts and a pilot study was done to assess the reliability. Cronbach's alpha coefficients were between 0.52 and 0.89 for different measures. The results showed that, in active-participant group, perception towards facilitative factors and bottlenecks, environmental awareness and physic-ecological feasibility of rangeland projects and in passive-participant group perception towards facilitative factors and bottlenecks and physic-ecological feasibility were determined the participation in rangeland projects.