investigating on the performance of participatory irrigation management in iran: case study- tajan water user association

water user associations (wuas) are one of the water market development models and a way to transfer the irrigation management from government sector to water users which have been increasingly taken into account over the recent years. in iran accordingly, a number of wuas has been developed in downstream dam irrigation and drainage networks on pilot scale. the major goal of wuas is to improve water usage efficiency. however, since the countries efforts in this regard are very recent, evaluation and monitoring the efficiency of these institutions is essential. this study, consequently, was aimed to investigate the performance of tajan wuas in mazendaran province from three aspects of increasing total factor productivity, member satisfaction and performance management criteria. the results suggested that the members are provided with higher irrigation efficiency, water economic return and tfp in relation to contiguous farmers out of the tajan wuas. furthermore wuas succeeded to satisfy about 65 percent of the member farmers which is mainly due to training and social classification. the ratio of financial self-sufficiency and water price recovery were estimated as 79 and 65 percent, respectively.