A Social Exchange Approach to people’s participation in sustainable management of water resources programs in Iran

The degree of popular participation in development programs is a major determinant of success or failure but the factors which make participation efforts successful still remained a mystery. Many studies have developed numerous and sometimes different views concerning to the dimensions of participation. Most of these literature's tends to be descriptive and rarely applies theory. This study was designed to analyze and modeling the people participation in Watershed Management Programs in Iran by using the framework of social exchange theory and determine the role of this theory in explaining people participate in Watershed Management Programs.In this Research we have modeled social exchange theory as an approach to people participation in watershed resources management projects in Iran.Multiple regression analysis discovered that exchange factors explained 33 percent of variation in the level of people participation in watershed management programs. This study found that social exchange theory is an appropriate perspective to explain level of people participation but participation is a complex issue and future researchers might use multiple perspectives for explaining participation.