Best soil comanagement practices for two watersheds in Germany and Iran using game theory-based approaches

Collaborative management is increasingly applied to indicate environmental and socio-economic negotiations in every corner of the world. The engagement of multiple stakeholders accompanying experience, science, and economy probing skills is expected to unravel such issues. However, the collaborative approaches to manage existing issues at watershed scale have not been adequately applied. Therefore, the present study has exemplified the establishment of a comanagement framework for the soil management for two case studies i.e., Schleswig-Holstein State of Germany and Galazchai Watershed of Iran using a stakeholder oriented approach applying game theory based methods. Due to management perspectives, different stakeholder groups were involved to investigate effective soil conservation practices. Farmers, consultants, and service providing companies in Germany and residents, policy making institutions and executive organizations in Iran were detected as key stakeholders. The Condorcet and Fallback bargaining methods were used to diagnosis agreement point. Based upon the results, the developed case study in Germany demonstrated close relation among farmers and consultants (53%) in contrast with service providing companies. The same situation was observed among residents and policy makers in Iran. Besides, the tendency to implement mechanical practices among farmers in Iran was about 60% (149 of 243), however, in Germany 86% of farmers prefer to use managerial practices.