Fish farmers’ welfare and climate change adaptation strategies in southwest, Nigeria: Application of multinomial endogenous switching regression model

Abstract

This study examined the impact of climate change adaptation strategies on the welfare status of aquaculture fish farmers in Southwest, Nigeria. Multistage sampling procedure was used in the selection of 288 respondents. To account for selection bias due to both observable and unobservable factors where more than two options arise, the multinomial endogenous switching regression model was used to analyze the collected data. The empirical findings revealed that level of education brought about increase in the probability of adopting bore-hole construction, stocking time adjustment and embankment creation as adaptation strategies to climate change. Also, adoption of stocking time adjustment and embankment creation by the adopters increased food security index by 106.1 and 16.9%, respectively. Furthermore, adoption of stocking time adjustment in the adopters’ category reduced the poverty gap by 87.2%. It is, therefore, recommended that policies which promote adoption of climate change adaptation strategies (especially stocking time adjustment and bore-hole construction being the strategies with the highest impact) should be formulated since they are capable of increasing welfare of aquaculture fish farmers.