Factors Affecting the Agricultural Lands Use Change in Tabriz County

One of the most important steps toward sustainable development is to protect agricultural lands. Every year some parts of the country’s best agricultural lands due to various reasons, face kinds of using changes and convert to non-agricultural lands. Dismissing of such lands causes irreparable damages to agricultural and horticulture production processes. In this respect, the purpose of this study is to examine the factors that affect agricultural land use changes. Since Tabriz County is one of the areas in which agricultural land use change have been conducted, it is chosen as the studied area in this research. Data for this study was collected through questionnaire which was conducted by 200 farmers in Tabriz County. To reach study’s aim, first, the effective factors on land use change besides farmers’ beliefs and attitudes that are likely to show an increasing effect on agricultural land use change, are classified, moreover, the effective factors are prioritized based on Coefficient Variation (CV) Criterion. In order to investigate the influenced factors on land use change, the Logit Regression model was applied. Results indicated that 107 respondents have changed the use of their land. According to the model results, factors like age, main occupation of farming, work experience, quality and productivity of agricultural land, having livestock besides farming, and positive attitude toward agricultural lands, significantly reduce the probability of land use change. While the level of respondents’ education, their total annual revenue, and possessing rain-fed lands have positive and significant effect on land use change.