Comparison of effective factors on preventing participation of rural societies in watershed management plans based on local people and experts viewpoints

The degree of public participation in watershed management programs is a major determinant of success or failure of the programs, but the factors which make people participate still remain unknown. The main objects of current study are comparison evaluation of effective factors on preventing participation of rural societies in watershed management plans based on all people and experts’ viewpoints in Emarat Watershed of Khorasan Razavi Province. In the current study the effective factors on preventing participation of rural societies were classify in four classes include "economic", "educational-extension", "design-executive" and "social" indicators and 14 sub-indicators. Then the indicators and sub-indicators were prioritized using Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process and Friedman Test. Finally, the two-sample Kolmogrov–Smirnov Test was also used to examine the agreement of the two views on the importance of the items. The results showed that, from the perspective of both groups of experts and peoples, economic indicator has a greater role in preventing people participation in relation to other indicators. The results of sub-indicators prioritization based on local people and expert’s viewpoints showed that “ignoring people´s income as a direct economic motivation” and “shortage of education of watershed residents about plants and their purposes”, respectively, were ranked as the most important sub-indices. The most important difference of the sub-indices from the perspective of local people and expert are related to the “ignoring people´s income as a direct economic motivation” and “lack of stakeholder’s consultation in the design and development of projects”. The overall conclusion is that considering the benefits of stakeholders, and multi-purpose projects and factors such as stakeholder consultation, and training of local communities can provide the basis participation of people in the watershed development projects.