The Effect of Excessive Water Extraction from Groundwater Resources on the Welfare of Farmers in the Malayer Plain

In recent years, with the excessive use of underground water resources in the Malayer Plain, the water level has dropped sharply and underground water resources, which serve as the main source of water supply for the agricultural sector and drinking, the city is facing a serious risk. Because of the relevance of each of the fields with other agricultural fields around, this study was done to show the potential effect of this problem on the welfare. So, in this study, the special econometric method was employed. The purpose of this study was to analyze the welfare of farmers and how it is affected by the exploitation of underground water resources. For this purpose, by using social welfare function, the effect of change in the value of groundwater level of social welfare producers was addressed. The necessary information was collected from 119 questionnaires carried out in 2015 .Moran's I statistics showed that the results of special regression method were better than those of Ols. The results of this study indicates a decline in the welfare loss of groundwater level and the continuation of the harvest of underground water resources would lead to a reduction in access to water and reduced production. The rate of change in return for the welfare of the reduction of every meter of underground water level to cultivate wheat and potatoes was 6983 and 7634 million Rials, respectively.