پذيرش پيش‌بيني‌هاي بلندمدت بارش‌: مورد مطالعه گندمكاران استان فارس‌

Adoption of Long-Term Rainfall Forecasting: A Case of Fars Province Wheat Farmers

Although rainfall forecasting has an important effect on agricultural production and therefore reducing risks on climatic disasters especially in wheat cropping areas of Iran, but the subject doesnʹt take care of farmers as adopting this innovation as well. This research aims at investigation of long-term rainfall forecasting adoption among Fars province wheat growers with a survey research method and cluster sampling technique. The survey instrument was a structural questionnaire with open and close ended questions, which validity and reliability confirmed. Results revealed that statistically there was no difference between adopters and non-adopters of rainfall forecasting information in the field of personal, social, economical and cultural characteristics. Although the knowledge, perception and behavior about using results of rainfall forecasting ~re different among various stakeholder, the innovation characteristics; relative advantage, triability, compatibility and complexity are statistically different among two groups of adopter and non-adopter farmers. Logistic regression modeling results showed that, farmerʹs access to information sources, relative advantage, and compatibility were the most important factors to predict adoption of rainfall forecasting usage. Optimizing use of rainfall forecasting information, it is necessary to use extension programs for changing knowledge, perception and behavior among wheat farmers.