Identifying the Perception of South Khorasan Operators in the Field of Sustainable Agricultural Water Resources Management

Water scarcity affects the development of irrigation agricultural land and reduces agricultural products directly. In addition, it threatens the food security and income of the villagers. The present research was conducted on the typology of mental models of good operators for agricultural water management in South Khorasan province. The study deals with the subjective opinions of the participants based on Q methodology. It is applied in terms of goal and exploratory and mixed in terms of data collection method. The participants of the study consisted of 21 well operators selected by the targeted judgment method and snowball technique. According to the results obtained from the exploratory factor analysis, the perception of the participating well operators about sustainable groundwater management at the farm level was classified into four types including Equalist, Fatalist, Scientist, and Consumerist types. The levels of variance explained by each factor are 27.7%, 16.10%, 14.35%, and 13% respectively. Finally, the results showed that the most important factor in achieving a common perception of sustainable agricultural water resources management is considering conflict management and negotiation techniques among well operators.