Socio-Economic Factors Affecting Rural Households’ Participation in Carbon Sequestration Projects in the Qom Province

The Carbon Sequestration Project has been an important international initiative for natural resources management and climate change reduction measures over the past two decades.It has tried to involve rural households in all stages of the project to achieve environmental, economic,social and human goals. A number of factors can affect relevant stakeholders’ participation in carbon sequestration project activities.This study aimed to investigate the socio-economic factors affecting the participation of rural households in the Qom province, using a survey with a descriptive-correlational approach. A sample of 265 households out of 840 rural households was selected using a simple random sampling method in five villages where this project was implemented.The data were collected using a structured interview technique by a questionnaire and analyzed using the SPSS22 and AMOS software.The results showed that rural people had highly been involved in the less active participation stages, such as expert consultation with council members and village elders, where as they had poor contribution to the projects through collaborative or spontaneous involvements.The most important factors affecting the participation of rural households in the carbon sequestration project were identified to be variables such as social capitals; extension programs; implemented conservation projects; agricultural and non-agricultural diversification initiatives in carbon sequestration projects; the land area of households’ permanent crop; and their agricultural income.Promoting social capital through extension programs, and applying a combination of conservation and livelihood diversification measures can not only strengthen the participation of rural communities in natural resource management projects but also increase the success of these projects.