Modeling the internal processes of farmers’ water conflicts in arid and semi-arid regions: Extending the theory of planned behavior

Abstract

Understanding the nature of water conflicts is a prerequisite to developing sustainable management of common water resources. Therefore, the main idea of this research was to understand the internal process of farmers’ water conflicts. An extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used as the theoretical research framework by incorporating multiple intentions (an expectation of conflict with industry, organization, and farmer) and four conflict types: within group in similar settlement, within group out of the same settlement, between farmers and industry, and between farmers and water state organization. The data were collected by survey method with a structured questionnaire from 215 farmers using random sampling and analyzed with the help of structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings indicated that all significant conflict types are influenced by their intentions. Some conflict behaviors, such as industry and water state organization conflicts were influenced not only by their own intentions, but also by their counterpart behaviors’ intentions. Furthermore, inclusion of additional constructs improved the predictive utility of the proposed model. At the end, implications of the study are discussed.