Assessment of the Relationship Between the Independent Variable of Awareness about the Soil Protection and Watershed Management with the People's Participation in the Catchment Areas for Rural Development

The recent studies in most of the countries show the impact of a large number of factors including: satisfaction, knowledge, condition, individual particulars, population specifications and behavioral variables in the people's participation.  The important issue is that whether such variables are effective on the amount of people's participation in Iran?  The objective of this study is to review the effective relationship factors on the farmers' knowledge in applying the Watershed Management Program(WMP) operations in Kooshkabad catchment area located in Khorasan Razavi Province in Iran (85 km2). The main objective of this study is to evaluate the factors which are effective on the people's participation in Iran. The total population of the under study catchment area is 1250 people (n=1250), in which 200 persons were selected by classified random sampling method (n=200). In fact, this research is designed to study the relationship between the awareness about Watershed Management Program (WMP) and level of participation in WMP  in Iran. To this end, a provisional research was performed and its data were gathered through the interview with the residents of 6 villages at the downstream part of Karde dam catchment area.  The knowledge and participation scale in watershed management operations is 0.90 and 0.92 respectively, which about half of farmers have the knowledge about watershed management operations and the participation level was at an intermediate level and there is a positive and significant relationship between the farmers' knowledge about watershed management program. Although, based on the findings, the level of social participation of people is more than the economical and environmental participation, in addition the findings show that the knowledge level of respondents about such operations has been low up to medium level  and participation in it has a positive and meaningful relationship with the knowledge of  such operations. ( r₌ 0.611, P₌0.000) .