The Identification of Factors Affecting the Use of Pressurized Irrigation Systems by Farmers in Iran

• Main Authors: Abdullah Momvandi, Maryam Omidi Najafabadi, Jamal F. Hosseini, Farhad Lashgarara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-10-01
• Series: Water
• Subjects: irrigation efficiency; water productivity; pressurized irrigation systems; model farmers; behavior; structural equation modeling (SEM)
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/10/11/1532

Climate change and water scarcity are the most important challenges of the agricultural sector, and pressurized irrigation systems (PISs) are one of the most significant ways to improve agricultural water productivity. The main purpose of this research was to identify the factors affecting the use of PISs by farmers. The statistical research population was a total of 2396 Iranian model farmers. The Cochran formula was used to determine the number of statistical samples. Accordingly, this comprised 331 people. The methodology of the study was mixed method research. The structural equation modeling technique, Mann&#8315;Whitney U, and Kruskal&#8315;Wallis tests were used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that the personal characteristics, tendency, attitude, self-efficacy, subjective norms, governmental support, environmental tensions, and technological features were the most important factors which influenced the farmers. It was found that all of these variables had a positive and significant relationship with the using of PISs by farmers, and they were able to predict 52% of the behavioral changes (<i>R</i>²) of the farmers. Among these variables, the attitude, with a path coefficient (&#946;) of 0.48, had the highest impact on the using of PISs by the farmers.