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In recent years, Iran has been increasingly faced with severe water scarcity. In this regard, participation of farmers in water conservation activities is proposed as one of the major solutions to this problem. Despite extensive efforts to encourage water conservation activities among Iranian farmers, there are still no thorough knowledge and understanding of the determinants of their participatory-based water conservation behaviors (PBWCB). Accordingly, the present study makes an attempt to develop an appropriate theoretical framework using the norm activation theory (NAT) to analyze farmers’ PBWCB. For this purpose, a sample of 378 Iranian farmers is selected using stratified random sampling method. The results show that the variable of personal norms (as the main predictor of behavior in NAT) could predict a significant percentage (55.7%) of the variance in PBWCB. In addition, other variables, including ascription of responsibility, subjective norms, perceived ability, and awareness of consequences, explained 47.8% of its variance as the main determinants of personal moral/norms. Analysis of the total effects of three water conservation values (egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric values) also revealed that farmers’ PBWCBs are mostly affected by their underlying values. A number of practical recommendations were finally presented to facilitate the implications of the study results for water resource managers, policy-makers, and executives in relevant organizations.

The current study was carried out with the purpose of discriminant analysis of participated farmers’ characteristics in CA project based on learning transfer system in Iran. The study was a quantitative research that was conducted by a survey technique. The study population was consisted of all farmers who participated in extension training programs of CA in three provinces (Golestan, Fars and Khouzestan) of Iran (N = 1204). The sample study was selected by Krejcie and Morgan’s sampling table through stratified random sampling method (n = 384). Data were collected through a questionnaire. Discriminant analysis was used to investigate farmers’ characteristics among three levels of weak, moderate and strong learning transfer. The findings illustrated that nine variables of learning transfer system (personal capacity for transfer, supervisor support, opportunity to use, positive personal outcomes, performance coaching, motivation to transfer, perceived content validity, transfer design and transfer effort–performance expectations) had significant effects on the level of farmers’ learning transfer. It can be concluded that the learning transfer system is an applicable tool to investigate farmers’ learning transfer in the agriculture sector. Accordingly, it recommends that follow-up plans must be designed to achieve both the CA aims and optimization of farmers’ learning transfer.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is a tool of sustainable agriculture utilized in many countries. Sustainable agriculture has different dimensions among which the most important ones are environmental, social, economic, and institutional. Educational and extension programs of CA are in accordance with the principles of sustainable agriculture. Accordingly, educational and extension contents prepared for farmers should include the four dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, economic, and institutional). The main objective of the present study was to examine the sustainability dimensions in the contents of CA training programs using an in-depth content analysis technique. Educational contents considered here included brochures, extension publications, regulations, and training slides. Based on the literature, themes and sub-themes for each of the four sustainability dimensions were extracted. Then, the frequency of each sub-theme in the CA training contents was counted. The findings showed differing emphasis on the sub-themes of sustainability dimensions in the contents of CA training programs so that the environmental and social dimensions had the highest and lowest frequencies, respectively. As the main principles of CA, no tillage/low tillage, crop rotation, and maintenance of crop residues constituted the sub-themes of the environmental dimension, and the emphasis was placed on this dimension reasonably and expectedly.