Identify Variables Affecting Rural Participation in Cooperatives Forest by-Products (A case study of Ilam city)

The current research is an applied study, which uses field data and avails itself of a descriptive-correlational and causal-correlation design to analyse the relationships between variables. This study was an attempt to identify variables affecting rural participation in cooperatives forest by-products in Ilam. Population of this research is exploiters of forests' by products in Ilam. The number of cooperatives in Ilam are 38 and number of members are 1300 based on Morgan and Takman tables, 297 member were selected for this study through stratified random sampling. A questionnaire, which an expert panel guaranteed the validity of it,was data collection instrument, and Using Cronbach alpha, the reliability of the questionnaire was measured. cornbach alpha coefficient was 0.91. The results of Spearman's coefficient of correlation indicated that there is a meaningful relation between age, work experience, level of education, ownership of agrarians, extension contacts, attitude to cooperative, trend to participation, distance to nearest agriculture services, social capital, legislation and support legal, cooperative management, government, level of income, capital, adventure, the use of resources information, and caste and their participation. The results of step-wise multivariate regression showd that age and level of education, ownership of agrarians, extension contacts and caste totally indicate 51.2 % of changes in variables depending on people's participation.