The Effective Factors on Willingness to Pay in the Project of Caspian Sea Water Transfer Using Contingent Valuation Method (Case Study: Semnan City)

People’s participation is one of the means financing investment through which will develop investment in different sectors such as the supply of public goods and services. In this research, how to participate of people in the proposed project of water transfer from Caspian Sea to Iran central plateau has been studied. The paper evaluates the value of the Semnan citizen’s participation in the implementation of water transfer project from the Caspian Sea to the Central Plateau using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) and identifies effective factors on willingness to the pay by applying Logit model in the framework of Maximum Likelihood Method. Data through two-dimensional dual questionnaire includes 384 members have been collected. The results from model estimation show that the firstly, the variables of income, educational level have a positive and significant effect and the number of household members and the proposed price has a negative and significant effect on the willingness to pay of Semnan’s citizens. The secondly, the average of per household willingness to pay, 433077,096 Rials annually and the people’s annual participation value, 30.1 milliard Rials is estimated. Citizen’s willingness to financing costs of project implementation indicates citizens' responsibility in the resolving of regional problems that can be presented as a good model in the performance of national plans and solving of regional problems.