Investigation of affecting social-economic factors on willingness to exodus of livestock from forest area in Mazandaran Province (Case study: Forests of Sari)

Livestock exodus from Mazandaran forests is always a problem for natural resources decision makers in province and the country. Irregular grazing in forest lands of Mazandaran province has been resulted in deterioration of many of natural resources including forest lands. This study, with the aid of quality function approach such as Logit Regression Model investigated the effect of social-economic factors in livestock exodus from the Forest in Mazandaran province in 2009. Therefore, variables such as annual’s income of rancher, number of jobs, scale of family, experience of ranching, preservationimportance of natural resources, age of ranchers, participation in rangeland management projects, importance of preserving period and education of rancher were investigated. Results showed that variable of ranching experience had most elasticity in which by one percent increase in this variable, probability of livestock exodus will be increased to 0.389 percent. According to marginal effect statistic, with increasing one year to rancher experiences, probability of livestock exodus will be increased up to 0.029 units. Also with increasing every 1000 Rials in monthly income, exodus probability will be increased up to 0.00018 units. According to the results, by addition of every year to the education level, probability of livestock exodus will be increased to 0.021 units. On the other hand, by addition of every individual to the scale of family, exodus probability will be decreased about 0.049 units. Also variables of preservation importance of natural resources, participation in rangeland management projects and level of respecting of preserving period of rangelands positively and significantly will affect the willingness of rancher to exodus from the forest.