The Effect of Individual, Social and Economic Factors on Villagers Participation in Watershed Projects in MianKouh Watershed, Yazd

Abstract

This paper is accounted as a descriptive field survey with respect to the control degree, data collection and finding generalization. Research population consists of all the residents of MianKouh in Yazd province. The data collection tool is a questionnaire which involves seven sections such as occupational and personal specifications of respondents, cultural and social elements, participation levels, economic factors, social relationships, information and promotion sources and individual participation rate in Watershed Projects (considered as the dependent variable). Questionnaire validity has been confirmed by a group of agricultural extension and Cronbach alpha coefficient. Results have shown that participation rate of respondents is low and moderate in all the evaluated aspects involving cultural and social elements, participation levels, economic factors, social relationships and information sources. Undoubtedly, if such circumstances continue, sustainable management of watershed projects is more likely to encounter some difficulties and impose high costs on the government in order to implement and expand the plans and projects while in recent years, there have been such conditions in the desired region. Considering the results of regression analysis, it is found that the highest variable value can be related to the variable of attendance in watershed courses and promotion workshops, which was entered in the analysis in the first step. Also, the operation has been stopped after the input of second variable that is meeting with farmers who implemented the watershed projects in the village. In total, these two variables could explain almost 35% variations of individual participation in watershed projects considered as a dependent variable.