Study On Farmer Households’ Participation Behavior, Its Performance And Satisfaction Of Water User Association

Participation irrigation management which transferred responsibilities ofirrigation management from the government to water user association(WUA),firstbegan in the United States, Frances, Colombia, and Taiwan during the1950s throughthe1970s. Through the formation of WUA, farmers directly involved in themanagement of irrigation systems in order to improve the quality of irrigationsystems, increase crop production, better farmers’ income.The formal WUA wasestablished in Hubei province, China, in1995. The country was founded WUA78000,managing irrigated area of about2.4million hectares, accounting for25.9%of theeffective irrigation area by2011. So, how is the situation of farmers participating inWUA and how is the extent of WUA to achieve the desired goal, which is an urgentneed to answer the question.Using307survey data of307farmer households andstatistical data on3949WUA of Jiangxi water conservancy department, thisdissertation provides theoretical and empirical answers to the following four keyquestions:(1)What factors can influence farmer houselds’ intention and behavior toparticipate in WUA and its consistency?(2)Does WUA increase farmers’ paddyproduction and income?(3)How is the performance of WUA and what factors wouldaffect the performance of WUA?(4)How do farmer households evaluate satisfactionof WUA.In order to answer three questions, the concrete research content mainly has thefollowing seven aspects:(1) On the Base of the theory of planned behavior(TPB),empirically researches Inherent mechanism about behavioral attitude, Subjectivenorm, perceived behavioral control on farmer households’ willingness to participatein WUA;(2) Based on Logistic-ISM, empirically researches hierarchical structure ofinfluencing factors on farmer households’ participating in WUA;(3)Applying binaryprobit model, empirically researches influencing factors of Consistency of farmerhouseholds’ stated preference and revealed preference for participating inWUA;(4)using Instrumental variable method，empirically researches the effect of WUA on farmer households’ crop yield increasing;(5) Building treatment effectmodel, using the maximum likelihood estimation method and two-step estimation,empirically studies the impact of WUA on farmer households’ incomes increasing;(6)Using a large sample, empirically analyses operating performance and its influencingfactors of WUA by ordered logit model;(7)applying group-AHP and fuzzy evaluation,evaluate farmer households’ satisfaction about WUA.On the basis of the above researches, the conclusions of the dissertation can besummarized as follows.(1)Farmer households’ willingness to participating in WUA is significantlyaffected by Subjective norm, perceived behavioral control. This indicates that TPBhas explanatory power to farmer households’ intent to participating in WUA.(2) Factors influencing farmer household’ participatory behavior showed somehierarchy structure. They are complex system with three-level structure consisting ofeight factors. Attitude of peasant households participation and good condition ofcanal system are surface direct factor. Peasant households’ knowledge about natureand functions of WUA and peasant households’ knowledge about right andobligations of WUA membership are intermediate indirect factors. Education,operation land scale, non-farm payrolls and development of rural economy level aredeep root factors.(3)The consistency of peasant households’ willingness and behavior ofparticipating in WUA is higher.267farmer households have stated willingness toparticipating in WUA. Among them,213farmers have participated in WUA. Theconsistency is79.78%. Moreover, operation land scale, attitude of peasant householdsparticipation, peasant households’ knowledge about nature and functions of WUA,peasant households access to information of WUA, the transparency of WUAmanagement, the scale of the WUA executive committee have positive effect on theconsistency of peasant households’ willingness and behavior of participating inWUA.(4)WUA has a significant impact on improving rice yields of peasant households.rice yields of peasant households participating in WUA are significantly higher thanpeasant households uninvolved in WUA.WUA is helpful to increasing rice yields.After building WUA, getting adequate water, when farmer households need toirrigate.(5)WUA has a significant effect on the increase of farmers’ income. The totalincome, agriculture income and off-farm income of farmer households involving inWUA are significantly higher than those who are not involved in WUA. Mechanismof WUA affecting farmers’ income is mainly manifested in the following aspects.(6)The number of years of establishment, registration, having fixed office place,the number of WUA staff, the origin of WUA, the boundaries of WUA establishment,the generation pattern of main leaders of the Association, the identity of the principalleaders of WUA,Irrigation project ownership certificates, the good condition ofirrigation facilities, Irrigation district scale have a significant impact on the runningperformance of WUA. But between different types of WUAs, there are differences inthese factors affecting the mechanism.(7)The assessment of farmer households on WUA satisfaction is satisfactory.The dissertation builds satisfaction evaluating indexes system of WUA based onrespective4aspects, namely, Irrigation service quality, water management, socialbenefits, economic benefits. The study finds that the comprehensive evaluation offarmers households on WUA satisfaction is satisfied, applying the combination ofAHP and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation.This dissertation innovates in the following three aspects:First of all, an analytical framework has been constructed for the analyses ofbehavior of farmer households participating in WUA. That is, the willingness toparticipation--Participation behavior--the consistency of peasant households’willingness and behavior of participating in WUA. Above all, the willingness offarmer households to participating in WUA is researched based on TPB. This is notonly beneficial to expand the application of TPB to the behavior of farmerparticipation in irrigation management, but also provides a new way to interpret thebehavior. Then, using ISM model, this dissertation analyses logical hierarchystructure and the interaction between the factors that affect farmer householdsparticipatant in WUA. This compensates for the deficiencies that existing researchesonly examine influencing factors of the size and direction. Finally, with the binary Probit model, this dissertation identifies the factors that have impact on theconsistency of peasant households’ willingness and behavior of participating inWUA.This can be more accurately predict behavior with willingness.Secondly, this dissertation enriches the impact of WUA on agriculturalproduction. Most existing researches focus on impact of WUA on individualagricultural production, such as the impact on the farming yield. This paper examinesboth the effect of WUA on raising paddy yield, but also verifies the impact of WUAon farm household total income, agricultural income and non-farm income. This iswider and deeper than previous studies.Thirdly, this dissertation expands theory on performance of WUA. In view of thefact that the existing literature on running performance and influencing factors ofWUA is less, and more for qualitative research, lack of system and quantitativeresearch, therefore, this paper examines the mechanism of the factors of influencingon operating performance of WUA, applying to ordered logit model.