Assessing the Value of Groundwater by The Farmers’ Contribution to Kashmar Plain

Due to the semiarid and arid regions of Iran, it is suffering from water scarcity and severe droughts. Khorasan Razavi province is no exception to this rule, and accordingly it is facing the lack of sufficient water resources, which need to be improved by approaches used for optimal allocation of water resources. Water pricing can be an effective tool of demand management and the optimal allocation of water resources as well the protection of water resources.

Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the willingness to pay (WTP) for irrigation water for the cities of Kashmar, Kuhsorkh, Khalilabad and Bardeskan using the Heckman’s two-stage model during 2019-2020.

The results demonstrated that 40 % of farmers were willing to pay more than the current tariff for access to irrigation water. Thus, the mean WTP for irrigation water was 518, 594, 606 and 569 Rials for the cities of Kashmar, Kuhsorkh, Khalilabad and Bardeskan, respectively. The results of the ordinary least squares (OLS) also showed that the farmer's income had the highest positive effect on WTP for irrigation water with a coefficient of 0.21, indicating that the higher the income of farmers consuming irrigation water, the higher the farmers’ WTP for using irrigation water in order to have easier access to water resources. However, variables, such as dependency burden and area of cultivation had a significant negative effect on WTP for irrigation water, suggesting that as the dependency burden, and area of cultivation increased, farmers was less willing to pay for the use of irrigation water. Given the importance of water for the farmers living in the study regions and their high WTP, it therefore is recommended to provide better and easier access to water resources for the farmers by transporting water from the water-rich region to water-scarce one.