Climate change adaptation: factors influencing Chinese smallholder farmers’ perceived self-efficacy and adaptation intent

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• 作者：Morey Burnham ; Zhao Ma
• 关键词：Adaptive capacity ; Climate change ; Climate perception ; China ; Smallholder farmers
• 刊名：Regional Environmental Change
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：17
• 期：1
• 页码：171-186
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Earth and Environmental Science
• 刊物主题：Climate Change; Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts; Oceanography; Geography, general; Regional/Spatial Science; Nature Conservation;
• 出版者：Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• ISSN：1436-378X
• 卷排序：17

文摘

Understanding how individuals perceive their ability to adapt to climate change is critical to understanding adaptation decision-making. Drawing on a survey of 483 smallholder farmer households in the Loess Plateau region of China, we examine the factors that shape smallholder farmer perceptions of their ability to adapt to climate change and their stated intent to do so. We apply a proportional odds ordered logistic regression model to identify the role that determinants of adaptive capacity play in shaping smallholders’ perceived self-efficacy and adaptation intent. Our study provides further evidence that self-efficacy beliefs are a strong, positive predictor of adaptation intent. Our study suggests that human capital, information and technology, material resources and infrastructure, wealth and financial capital, and institutions and entitlements all play an important role in shaping smallholder perceived self-efficacy, while state-society dependencies may reduce smallholder perceived self-efficacy. In addition, our study suggests that perceiving climate change risks and impacts do not necessarily lead to an intention to adapt. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of incorporating both the objective determinants of smallholders’ adaptive capacity and their subjective perceptions of these objective determinants into future climate change adaptation programs and policies in order to facilitate adaptive actions. Identifying factors that cause individuals to have a low estimation of their adaptive ability may allow planned adaptation interventions to address these perceived limitations and encourage adaptive behavior.