Farmers In Southwest Irrigation Behavior Influence Factor Analysis And Response To Drought

China is one of the world’s water-scarce countries. With the rapid development of its economy, people’s demand for water on living and production has increased. The water shortage in China is getting worse. Particularly, the problem of agricultural water is serious. In the south, known for abundant water resources, particular in the southwest region, rich rainfall, warm climate and abundant groundwater are the main advantages for its agricultural production. However, in recent years, continuous and destructive droughts have caused that irrigation water for agricultural production cannot be supplied. The rare droughts placed devastating effects on the expected harvest for the farm households and even destroyed the agricultural production environment. Meteorologists proposed that extreme climate change is the main cause of the droughts. However, the continuous droughts also revealed that many subjective factors that further exacerbated the impact of the droughts should not be ignored and further exacerbated the impact of drought. These factors include serious waste of water resources, farmers and local governments’lack of the sense of crisis on possible disasters (especially drought), and less-developed Irrigation pattern; general neglect of basic water conservancy facilities. All these also get rise to attentions and discussions about the agricultural irrigation patterns and the overall construction of water conservancy facilities in southwest. Definitely, deeply exploration on the problems of agricultural irrigation is urgently needed.In fact, as the main part of irrigation activities, farm households’inappropriate irrigation behaviors might influence the irrigation efficiency and the agricultural production. The analysis on the influencing factors of farmer households’irrigation behaviors can comprehensively help us to understand their behavior choices and the agricultural irrigation pattern of "live on the nature". Therefore, this dissertation regards the farm households’irrigation behaviors and the influencing factors as the research objectives to analyze the effects on the irrigation patterns and the irrigation efficiency in southwest China. And it aims to further provide theoretical support for improving the irrigation patterns and the irrigation efficiency in this area. Likewise, with the analysis of the farm households’inappropriate irrigation behaviors, the dissertation can also satisfies the farm households’demands and provides practical guidance for their agricultural irrigation activities to appropriately face the extreme climate in the future.This dissertation is based on the conditions in China while considering the impact of the continuous droughts. Making farm householders as the research objectives, this dissertation tends to focus on their irrigation behaviors and the influencing factors rather than the only emphasis on the government policy and the market mechanisms such as water pricing. The first chapter is instruction. The research background and research significance are firstly determined. Combing literatures reviews, the research goals, research content and methods can be further made, as well. In the second chapter, the theoretical analysis for the farm households’irrigation behaviors is built. Game theory is seen as the basic analysis tools to provide theoretical analysis of influencing factors of farm householders’irrigation behaviors, which will further provide guidance for setting the variables in econometrics models and the empirical analysis in the following chapter. Chapter three is the part of empirical analysis built on the analysis of Anshun City, Guizhou Province. According to field survey (including data collection, interviews, enquiry from the local government and making photos), relevant data and information are obtained for the dissertation. Then, on the basis of logistic model, all the data in the empirical analysis can further testified the validation of theoretical analysis in Chapter two. In the final chapter, combining the assumptions and conclusions in theoretical and empirical analysis, the final conclusions of the dissertation can be made.According to the conclusions, the farm households’irrigation behaviors can be influenced by many factors:the education levels of households, areas of economic crops, areas of irrigated arable land, cost of agricultural production, conflicts of water using, water conservancy facilities in the community and expectations on future droughts have positive impact on their willingness; While ages of the householders, the government’s input during the droughts have the reverse effect on their willingness to participate providing irrigation services. Furthermore, the policy recommendations can be made. They include the followings:the government’s water policy must be based on the basic interests of farmers and emphasizes the special demand from the new generation (young farmers born in1970’s and1980’s); understanding the less-developed level of economy in the rural areas in the southwest while taking into accountant the characteristics of the "public goods" of the irrigation and related facilities, the government can introduce the market means, such as introducing agricultural related enterprises, in order that the construction of irrigation facilities invested by government can be improved; making use of the function of "double-edged sword" caused by the droughts, expanding the awareness of water conservation and the awareness of preventing drought in the southwest; basing on the actual situations in the southwest, appropriate water conservancy facilities, such as rainwater storage project, should be built; establishing proper self-management organizations for agricultural water management to coordinate farmers’irrigation behaviors, manage irrigation activities and irrigation facilities.