Mohsen Sharafatmandrad

Stakeholders' hop spots for conservation are crucial for preserving current arid ecosystems and halting the projected trend of habitat loss. In managing arid environments, stakeholder culture for ecosystem conservation has received little attention. The aim of this study was to assess ecological culture and its main drivers in the context of dry ecosystem conservation. Cultural indicators were used to map ecological culture in study region. Questionnaires were used to collect data. Results showed that forests were among the most important land covers in terms of ecological culture (p<0.05). Using PCA, the most important drivers affecting ecological culture were identified, and then the contribution of each driver to ecological culture was identified using structural equation model (SEM). The results showed that in total, the direct and indirect relationships of urbanization (p<0.001) and agriculture (p<0.01) negatively and climate (p<0.01), topography (p<0.01) and income (p<0.01) positively affected ecological culture. Results in this study can be used by policymakers to identify social hotspots where people-led landscape conservation could be feasible with controlling main drivers.