Factors Affecting Farmers’ Satisfaction from Water Users Association in the Harran Plain-GAP Region, Turkey

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The purpose of this paper was to determine the factors affecting farmers’ satisfaction from Water Users Associations (WUAs) in the Harran Plain-Turkey. The data used in this study come from a sample of 378 farmers among 23,204 in the Şanlıurfa-Harran Plain. They were chosen via simple random sampling method and interviewed face to face. Sampling was conducted in 52% of the settlements. To analyze the collected survey data, SPSS 15 was used together with Kruskal Wallis, Mann-Whitney, Pearson Chi-square and the correlation tests. The results indicated the existence of relationship between satisfaction and education levels, knowledge level about WUA, and status of ownership, land area, age, farming experiences, income, and service quality given by WUAs. These factors significantly explained satisfaction of farmers. The average of variables’ highest satisfaction was calculated as 47.4%. The highest satisfaction was 68.5% and belonged to the status of ownership; the lowest one was 28.3% in the case of farming experiences. The managers of WUAs should be concentrating on these factors in order to increase satisfaction and provide training and information for farmers.