What are the factors impeding or enhancing cooperative behavior amongst farmers in Chinese irrigation district maintenance? This paper argues that economic inducement mechanisms can enhance farmers' cooperative behavior in ID management, especially under the background of being lack of self-organization. The Nash equilibrium solution of cooperative behavior amongst farmers is derived. Given the amount of other farmers' maintenance effort, the factors influencing farmer i's cooperative behavior are classified into two groups-endogenous factors and exogenous factors. The endogenous factors are expected income achieved from irrigated agriculture and geographical location along an irrigation canal. The exogenous factors are the importance of the consumption of private goods relative to the use of the irrigation infrastructure, collective goods, and the price of collective goods. The influence of each factor is analyzed. Economic inducement mechanisms are shown to be crucial for the emergence of cooperative behavior amongst farmers in an ID. Dividing farmers within an ID into different water user associations can help to overcome strategic behavior in ID management, providing technical support, establishing compensation mechanisms and establishing land-transferring mechanisms can induce more maintenance effort.