Socio-economic, social-capital, and psychological characteristics and climate change adaptive behavior of farmers in Iran

In recent years, climate change in Iran has led to frequent droughts and reduction of available water resources. Iranian farmers are extremely vulnerable to unexpected drought. Despite the undesirable impacts of climate change on their vulnerability, farmers have not sufficiently used adaptive strategies; accordingly, we investigated factors affecting farmers’ choice of adaptive strategies to lessen the consequences of climate change in Iran. We propose a framework that covers household, farm, socio-economic, social-capital, and psychological characteristics. Farmers (n = 366) in Fars province, Iran, were selected using a multistage, stratified random sampling method, and data were collected through questionnaires during 2018-2019. Considering the adaptive strategies of changing crop varieties, crop patterns, and irrigation technologies, a multinomial logit model was used. The results showed that off-farm income and access to credit had a significant positive effect on adopting costly and efficient strategies, including changing crop varieties and irrigation technologies. Moreover, our results indicated that when farmers actively participate in social groups, their beliefs and risk perception of climate change become stronger, providing greater incentives to employ adaptive strategies. This study revealed the effective role of social-capital and psychological characteristics in the adaptive behavior of farmers in Iran.