This paper examines farmer intentions to adapt to global climate change by analyzing responses to a climate change scenario presented in a survey given to large-scale farmers across the US Corn Belt in 2012. Adaptive strategies are evaluated in the context of decision making and farmers’ intention to increase their use of three production practices promoted across the Corn Belt: no-till farming, cover crops, and tile drainage. This paper also provides a novel conceptual framework that bridges a typology of adaptation (...) with concepts that help predict intentionality in behavior change models. This conceptual framework was developed to facilitate examination of adaptive decision making in the context of agriculture. This research effort examines key factors that influence farmers’ intentions to increase their use of the practices evaluated given a climate change scenario. Twenty-two covariates are examined across three models developed for no-till farming, cover crops, and tile drainage. Findings highlight that farmers who believed they should adjust their practices to protect their farm from the negative impacts of increased weather variability were more likely to indicate that they would increase their use of each of the practices in response to climate change. Additionally, visiting with other farmers to observe their practices was positively associated with farmers’ intentions to increase their use of the adaptive strategies examined. Farmers who were currently using no-till farming, cover crops, and tile drainage were also more likely to plan to increase their use of these practices in response to increased weather variability associated with climate change. However, farmers who reported high levels of confidence in their current practices were less likely to plan on changing their use of these practices in response to climatic changes. (shrink)

Increasing farmers’ acceptance and adoption of environmentally beneficial farming practices is essential for mitigating negative impacts of agriculture. To support adoption through policy, it is necessary to understand which types of farms or farmers do or do not apply such practices. However, farmers are not a homogeneous group and their behavior is subject to a complex array of structural, socioeconomic, and socio-psychological influences. Reducing this complexity, farmer typologies or archetypes are useful tools for understanding differing motivations for the uptake of (...) sustainable farming practices. Previous investigations of the role of farmer archetypes in the adoption of such practices rely on either purely qualitative or purely quantitative methods in data collection, typology creation, and hypothesis testing. Our study combines both approaches by classifying survey respondents into farmer types based on a previous Q methodological study. We then use these types in a two-part regression model that aims to explain participation in agri-environmental schemes and the level of scheme participation. To control for farm structural factors, we additionally link our questionnaire data to secondary data from the farm accountancy data network. Results indicate that in Austria, AES are attractive to all types of farmers, but the level of participation in these schemes differs between archetypes: Profitability-oriented farmers participate less, and nature-oriented farmers participate more than other types. This suggests that monetary compensations for sustainable farming practices are not perceived as sufficient by certain groups of farmers, and policy makers need to consider additional kinds of incentives. (shrink)

Farmers perceive and appraise climate change, related risks and opportunities as well as adaptation measures differently. Such differences are not well understood and rarely considered in extension services, outreach activities and agricultural policies. We aim to develop empirically based farmer types, who differ in their socio-cognitive and emotional processes towards droughts, their expected drought impacts, their appraisal of drought adaptation measures, and their previous and intended implementation of such measures. The Model of Private Pro-Active Adaptation to Climate Change provides the (...) theoretical foundation for a three-phase procedure of semi-structured interviews, a standardized survey and a qualitative workshop. The principal component analysis reveals eight socio-cognitive and emotional processes of relevance for forming the famer types of drought adaptation: perceived opportunities resulting from droughts, perceived effectiveness of drought adaptation measures, negative affect towards droughts, perceived work effort and perceived social approval of drought adaptation measures, fatalism, trust in public measures, and perceived self-efficacy. Cluster analyses of these processes yield four types of Austrian farmers. The social implementers perceive themselves as capable, and drought adaptation measures as effective, socially approved, and effortless. The unaffected profiteers have hardly been affected by droughts and perceive beneficial impacts due to a decline in precipitation. The trusting fearfuls have already experienced severe drought impacts and express intense negative affect towards droughts. The passive fatalists focus on avoidance and do neither trust in important others nor in public measures. The identified farmer types of drought adaptation may support the design of climate and agricultural policy instruments and of tailor-made education and communication programs, for instance to increase self-efficacy and reduce fatalism. (shrink)