Understanding factors that contribute to farmers' water conflict behavior

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding water conflict behaviors and their contributing factors is critical for developing effective agricultural water resource management. Hence, this paper examines how water conflict behaviors are addressed in a model guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior and whether there is a potential to develop the model further to include quality of life (QoL), perception of water crisis, sense of place, and social capital in explaining the farmers' water conflicts. Stratified random sampling was used to survey 212 farmers in the villages that benefited from the Gawshan dam in the Kermanshah region, Iran. Based on the results, the causal role of subjective norms in influencing intention to manifest conflict has not been established, while low social capital was of importance for intention to create conflict. Furthermore, low QoL, as well as high perception of water crisis, was found to be important for attitude formation toward conflict. These results enrich the empirical evidence in support of improving the understanding of farmers' water conflict behaviors.