A Survey Study of Residential Awareness on Utilization Function of Agricultural Water and Its Maintenance --A case study in Niwase and Natsukawa of Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture

The agricultural water has manifold functions for farming at community level. However, along with the difficulties to maintain the agriculture water path that are caused by the decreasing of farmers and the aging of the society, the agricultural water is losing its functions even that as water resource for local community. This paper presents a survey of the residential awareness on regional water utilization to find the possibility for the maintenance of agricultural water path. Economic evaluation is tried for the regional warter utilization function. This study is carried out at a regional level that covers both farming households and non farmers. Following three points can be confirmed based on the results of questionnaire survey. Firstly, local citizens admit that the agricultural water does have some values (3,037 Yen per household per year). Secondly, the higher the environmental awareness is, and the longer the citizen has lived there, the higher evaluation to function of the agricultural water can be observed. Thirdly, even within those who is holding high evaluation to the agricultural water, it is thought to be quite difficult to maintain the agricultural water path due to the aging of the society and uneven distribution of the participants