Accountants and the Increase in Water Productivity: Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Nowadays, the water sacristy has become one of the serious concerns of human society, so that technical and engineering solutions alone cannot solve this problem and attention to its non-technical aspects has become an undeniable necessity. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the role of accountants in the increase in water productivity by using structural equation modeling and through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis approach. The present study is practical in nature and is considered as a descriptive-exploratory correlation study. The required data were collected through the distribution of questionnaires among 168 accountants working in the west of the country. The time period of this study is the second and third seasons of year 2021. According to the research findings accountants can play a role in the process of water productivity management through the three components of economic pricing, water reporting and reputation costs. Based on the second-order confirmatory factor analysis, the factor loading of the three mentioned components on the main structure (accountants role in water productivity increase) are: water costs/economic pricing (0.74), water reporting (0.69) and reputation costs (0.62). Finally, research findings also showed that the demographic variable of length of service affects all three components and the gender variable affects only the economic pricing component. Other demographic variables (age, education and type of company) do not have a significant effect on the three main components.