How do farmer’s disaster experiences influence their climate change perception and adaptation?

Abstract

ABSTRACT There is no denying that the global climate becomes warmer in the past several decades. And extreme events induce a decline in agricultural production. This paper aims to examine the effects of farmers' disaster experiences on their perception of climate change and adaptive strategies based on a semi-structured survey with 903 farmers in China. The results reveal that the majority of local farmers perceive annual air temperature has increased, annual precipitation has reduced and global is warming (79.07%, 79.73%, and 88.26%, respectively). There are significant differences between farmers with and without disaster experiences in perceptions of climate change, technical adaptive strategies and migration (P< 0.05). Finally, the further exploration by path analysis model underscores that disaster experience has a direct and significant relationship with perceived climate change at 1% probability level. Farmers' perceptions of climate change are directly significantly correlated with adaptive strategies Furthermore, disaster experiences have a highly negative and direct influence on migration at 5% level. However, farmers' disaster experience shapes economic and technical strategies indirectly though climate change perceptions. Finally, targeted policy interventions such as non-farm adaptation options, development of agrometeorological forecast ability, climate smart agriculture, and encouraging land transfers are proposed.