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The agricultural sector is the largest consumer of water and its demand management has a significant impact on water resources of arid areas. This research proposes a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model to prioritize agricultural water demand management (AWDM) strategies based on surveys carried out with 35 Iranian experts in an arid region. It hybridized the advantages of the modified technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (MTOPSIS) and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods, and it is called MTAHP. The AHP model is used to determine the relative weights and consistency ratio assessment and finally the MTOPSIS model is used to rank the strategies. Moreover, ELimination and Choice Expressing REality III (ELECTRE III) as a non-compensatory model and simple additive weighting (SAW) as a compensatory model were used for comparison with the proposed model. The proposed model result was similar to the SAW model but different from ELECTRE III. High-ranked strategies are training farmers, improvement of cropping patterns and land levelling and modernization of the irrigation systems in the region, respectively. The results of this research show the ability of the hybrid model of AHP and MTOPSIS to prioritize the strategies for AWDM which is recommended for other similar regions. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.