Investigating Factors that Affecting Citrus Waste Production in Mazandaran Province, Iran

Agricultural waste management is one of the important issues that agricultural producers should consider to increase their income and environmental protection. Therefore, the investigation of factors that reduce the rate of agricultural production wastage as well as citrus production wastage is of utmost consequence in order to manage wastes, reduce environmental degradation and ecosystem destruction, and increase food security and economic growth. Inspired by this assumption, the aim of this study was to investigate factors affecting citrus waste production in Mazandaran Province, Northern Iran (N= 7867). A stratified random sampling method was employed to collect data from 165 farmers. The main tool to collect data was a self-designed questionnaire whose content validity was approved by a panel of experts and an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and its reliability was confirmed by calculating a Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α ≥ 0.7).The results of the exploratory factor analysis showed that socioeconomic and technical factors altogether accounted for 60.257% of variances  in citrus production wastage.