| Abstrakt: |
The reduction of water resources and their inefficient use has had a major impact on the rural economy and the agricultural sector. For this reason, attention to agricultural water management has become a central issue. Therefore, in the present study, an attempt has been made to investigate the factors affecting the optimal management of agricultural water resources in Islamabad West County in Kermanshah province. This research is applied in terms of purpose and is descriptive-analytical analysis. The statistical population consists of heads of agricultural land-exploiting households. The sample size was estimated to be 337 people using Cochran's formula, and Smart PLS software was used to analyze the issue. The analysis of the findings shows that the highest factor loading was estimated for the indicators of increasing the productivity of agricultural products (0.729), water collection and storage pool (0.743), and protection of water resources (0.734). The average Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.801, and composite reliability was evaluated at 0.852. The highest value of t (17.530) in the structural model between variables is related to economic and technical variables. The values obtained for the seven main factors indicate that the structural model of the research has a suitable and acceptable fit and predicts the indicators related to the exogenous structures of the model. The results show that the correct management and increase of water productivity require using a set of economic, technical, educational factors, etc., with the cooperation of people, institutions, and reforms in the structure of laws. Therefore, to improve the condition of the studied villages, the correct exploitation and increase of water efficiency from both quantitative and qualitative dimensions are the limiting factors in increasing agricultural production. Therefore, considering that the agricultural sector, which is the largest consumer of water resources, in the future must compete with other sectors in the field of water consumption and adapt to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
