Investigation of components affecting farmers' participation in irrigation management (Case of Khoy County)

The purpose of this study was to investigate components affecting farmers' participation in irrigation management (case of Khoy County). This study was causal-relationship and a survey was conducted. The study population were all farmers in the Khoy County in the crop year 2015-16 (N=19088) and a number of 379 number of people were chosen using the Krejcie and Morgan table (1970) and stratified sampling with proportional allocation as research samples. The data collection tool was a questionnaire whose content validity was confirmed by professors and experts and its reliability was determined by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficient between 0.72 and 0.85. The obtained data were analyzed using the SPSSv19 software. According to the results, the participation of farmers in irrigation management was evaluated at a good level. The results showed that the independent variables including farmers' attitude toward their participation in irrigation management, awareness of the consequences of participation in irrigation management, suitability of the technical factors in irrigation network, use of farmers from information sources, social norms toward participation in water management, farmers' attitude toward agricultural extension personnel, farmers' sociability and attitude toward water officials and experts with dependent variable of participation in irrigation management had had positive relationship and significant at 1 percent level. The results of stepwise regression analysis showed that the mentioned variables explained 75 percent of the variance of the participation in irrigation management.