Factors affecting farmer's participation in water resources management (Case study: Miandoab township)

The agricultural sector is the largest consumer of water in the world and Iran. Since the Iran is a country with limited water resources, planning for optimal management of water resources is essential. According to the fact that any plan will not succeed without the participation of farmers, the purpose of this descriptive -correlation study was to study factors affecting farmer's participation in water resource management. The validity of the questionnaire was approved by a panel of academic experts. Pre-test and calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficients were used to measure the reliability (0.77-0.83). Farmers in Miandoab city formed the population of the study and 134 samples were selected using cluster sampling. The results showed that the level of participation of farmers in water resource management was moderate, with an average of 3.37 on a 5-point Likert scale. Result of multivariate stepwise regression analysis showed that six variables including farmers 'knowledge about the management of water resources in agriculture, the farmer's knowledge of concepts and methods of participation, competency officials and civil servants in the implementation of irrigation projects from the perspective of farmers, the attitude toward participate in water conservation projects, the convergence of social cohesion and morale of farmers and the use of agricultural loans explained 45.4 percent of variance of participation in water resource.