Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Agricultural Land Use Change to Villa Gardens: A Case of Sirch village in Kerman City

Nowadays, encroaching on the virtually pristine and untouched lands of the villages, especially the pleasant summer-quarter villages surrounding the big cities and metropolises, is pervasive. This becomes even more critical when villa construction and summer-quarters houses are modernized; as a result, land brokers seize the opportunity and exploit the economic vulnerability of the villages. Therefore, susceptible villages are targeted and encroached. This paper aims to analyze the factors affecting the agricultural land use change to villa gardens in the Sirch village in Kerman City, Iran. The present study is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-analytical in terms of method. Random sampling method was used and the sample size was determined by Cochran's formula as 97 households in the under-study area. The first part of data were collected from field studies, questionnaire, observation, selected and researcher-developed indicators and the second part were collected using library studies. The validity of the questionnaires was examined by experts and the validity coefficient was 0.90. Meanwhile, ANP was used to rank the studied indicators in terms of the effect of factors affecting agricultural land use change and SPSS was used to analyze research questions. The results showed that an average of 54% and 20% of Sirch residents considered the effect of the economic factor on land use change as medium and high. Thus, opportunists' policy, rural people's need for diversifying their income, farmer's financial needs, the low value of the rural land compared to those in the urban areas, the increase in the cost of rural life, the prevalence of false jobs and the desirable income of some of them (such as smuggling) is quite tangible to residents. The Pearson correlation test was employed to investigate the relationship between the factors affecting land use change to the villa garden. The results showed that there is a significant relationship between these two variables. Factors affecting the agricultural land use change to the garden villa was 0.572, indicating direct and significant relationship between these two variables with moderate correlation with 99% confidence level.