Studying key effective economic and social factors for agricultural investment in sustainable management in agricultural areas (Case of the Study: the East Miankoh district)

The use of land management practices can reduce soil erosion, increase the productivity of agricultural land and can consequently increase agricultural production. However, various factors such as physical, technical, economic, and social can affect the decision of farmers to use sustainable land management practices. In this study, we study the important economic and social factors affecting the use of agricultural land management techniques by farmers in mountainous areas considering the financial and human resources capacity. The statistical population includes farmer's households (N= 514). Using Cochran formula, 200 households were selected by the random sampling method. The data gathering tool used is a questionnaire. To analyze the data from among 30 variables, the exploratory factor analysis (FA) was used in the first stage, in order to extract the factors arising from the matrix period. In the next step, the methods Land Management and Spearman correlations methods were used in order to identify the key economic and social factors that are most effective. The findings of the research show that among the eight factors identified by factor analysis, the four factors that significantly affect investment in sustainable land management are: 1) Access to support services; 2) Participatory management; 3) Income from sales of products; 4) Personal factors. Therefore, to enhance the investment there should be more support services to farmers (especially microcredit), as well as measures to further the cooperation in the field of sustainable land management (e.g., training of farmers).