RESEARCH ARTICLE Perceived outcomes of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) technologies adoption in citrus farms of Iran (reflection of environment-friendly technologies) Fatemeh Razzaghi Borkhani 1 & Yaser Mohammadi 2 Received: 4 August 2018 /Accepted: 27 December 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract The main purpose of this study was to analyze the perceived outcomes of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) technol- ogies adoption in order to sustain citrus farms in Mazandaran province, Iran. Study population consisted of all citrus growers in the villages of 12 counties of Mazandaran province, which a sample of 290 orchardmen were selected through a proportional random sampling technique. A questionnaire was designed to collect data which was both valid and reliable according to expert opinion and Cronbach’ s alpha coefficient respectively. The results of the factor analysis showed that Bmarket access and safe product exports,^ Bconsumer ’ health and environment-friendly behavior,^ Bsafe production and public demand,^ and Binformation sharing and strengthening local associations^ were the four perceived outcomes of GAPs technologies adoption in citrus farms of Iran. These factors explained 65.02% of the total variance. These four perceived outputs of GAPs support economic, environmental, and social sustainability dimensions respectively. Keywords Good agricultural practices (GAP) . The perceived outcome . Citrus farms . Sustainable agriculture . Adoption of technology Introduction Environmental health conditions as environmental health inequalities can be described as health hazards dispropor- tionately or unfairly distributed among the most vulnera- ble social groups (Gouveia 2016). Around the world, con- cerns of health and safety in the food supply chain due to the inappropriate application of technology and traditional agriculture systems, environmental demolition, economic problems, and increased social inequalities (Rodriguez et al. 2009). In recent years, a growing demand for sus- tainable agricultural development in response to the envi- ronmental impacts of conventional agriculture has been added (Rasul and Thapa 2004). Maintaining the product, regarding environmental considerations coupled with re- ducing production costs, producing a healthy crop, and empowerment of farmers, are caused by the extension of widespread sustainable agriculture (Panahzadeh Parikhani et al. 2015). Pay attention to increasing appropriate envi- ronmental practices, increasing crop export and consumer demand for safety and quality agricultural products, the governments and private sector have increasingly encour- aged in order to establish of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) (Mankeb et al. 2014; Srisopaporn et al. 2015). The concept of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) is due to the rapid changes of increased globalization in food supply, as well as the trust and confidence of stakeholders to safety control and quality assurance of food production and environ- mental sustainability of agricultural systems (FAO 2003a, b; Pongvinyoo et al. 2014). Also, improved market opportunities for producers who are able to have their buyers’ trust that their Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues * Yaser Mohammadi y.mohammadi@basu.ac.ir Fatemeh Razzaghi Borkhani razzaghi.fatemeh@gmail.com 1 Agricultural Economic and Development College, University of Tehran, Iran, Tehran, Iran 2 Department of Agricultural Extension and Education, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran Environmental Science and Pollution Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-04083-0