Investigating the Different Dimensions of Water Poverty in the Provinces of Iran

Water is important as a prerequisite for the development and survival of the human race and plays a fundamental role in providing and achieving the social, economic, and environmental goals and priorities of any country. With the continuation of the unfavorable trend of the situation of water resources in the world and the prediction of the continuation of the water crisis, the problem of water shortage is continuously increasing. In this framework, this article tries to identify the factors affecting it by examining the various dimensions of water poverty, including driving forces, pressure, states, and impact, using the structural equation modeling approach - partial least squares method (PLS-SEM) in 2019. The results of the estimation of the model show that, firstly, the driving forces have a positive and significant effect on the pressure structures and the impact of water poverty at the level of the provinces of the country. Secondly, the pressure structure has a negative and significant effect on the state of water poverty. Thirdly, the structure of the states, which expresses environmental changes, has a negative and significant effect on the impacts of water poverty. Also, among the factors affecting water poverty in 2019, the variables are the number of doctors per ten thousand people with a coefficient of 0.934, the ratio of irrigated land to total cultivated land with a coefficient of 0.893, total drinking water consumption with a coefficient of 0.888, and desert phenomena with a coefficient of 1 are the most important influencing factors.