Feasibility of Farmers’ Participation in Optimal Irrigation Management System (Case of Guilan Province)

Farmers’ participation in the maintenance and operation of water facilities has a positive impact on their attitude and internal trends and incentives to have closer cooperation with Regional Water Organization. The transfer of irrigation management to farmers enhances the productivity of water facilities and ultimately, results in efficient water use in agriculture. In order to evaluate the effect of participation and transfer of irrigation management to farmers, four hypotheses have been proposed. The study was an applied research according to the goal and was a descriptive survey as data collection method. Judgmental sampling was used to take samples from the population. A researcher-made questionnaire was employed for data collection. It was conducted among 120 people in Guilan Regional Water Organization engaged in agricultural sections. The questionnaire's validity was confirmed by content validity and its total reliability was estimated by Cronbach's alpha as to be 0.86 using SPSS software. The effects of participation on farmers’ commitment, cooperation, and satisfaction and the legitimacy of Regional Water Organization of Guilan province were evaluated at 0.01 level, and no evidence was found to reject the hypotheses.