Resilience to Impacts of the Dust Crisis among Ahwaz County Date Palm Orchardists: An Application of Path Analysis

As extreme weather events, dust storms are a recurrent feature of the climate that has contributed to severe damage to farmers. The date palm growing sector in Khuzestan province is one of the dust- prone areas that had been severely affected during recent dust storms in the region. This study aims at investigating the factors contributing to date palm orchardists’ resilience to coping with dust stress. The population for this study comprised 157 date palm orchardists residing in Ahwaz County. This study is based on primary sources of data collected from 100 orchardists, following a structured questionnaire survey design. The questionnaire’s validity was confirmed by a panel of experts. The reliability of different scales was measured by the Alpha Cronbach coefficient which ranged between 0.59-0.84. Results revealed that washing dates, using protecting nets, spraying toxins, cultivating other crops between the palm trees and searching for other sources of income were all known as resilience behaviours among orchardists. Path analysis results showed that date palm growers’ perception of resilience (β=0.43) and social motives (β=0.21) contributed positively and significantly to the date orchardists’ resilience behaviour. There was also a significant positive indirect impact between social dialogue and the resilience of date orchardists towards dusty conditions.