Evaluation of farmers’ adaptation capacity indicators with declining groundwater levels in Kazerun plain, Iran

The aim of this study was to measure the main indicators of farmers' adaptation capacity response to the decreasing groundwater level in the Kazerun plain, Iran. For this purpose, 10 adaptation capacity indicators including local networks, confidence in government, interaction and mutual relation, labor and time, financial and infrastructure, inventing and innovation, adopting management, riskability, governance, knowledge and information have been measured and analyzed by the second-order confirmatory factor analysis model based on the 291 samples of farmers according to Cochran's formula. The results of factor analysis, prioritization of farmers' adaptation capacity indicators to cope with groundwater depletion, showed that the most important indicators were “adaptive management” ( T -value = 5.51), “finance and infrastructure” ( T -value = 3.94), and “local networks” ( T -value = 3.38). The results also showed that most of the indicators for estimating adaptation capacity have a high impact on the adaptation of local stakeholders, except for the government confidence index (average extracted variance = 0.501). The findings suggested that human capital such as farmer reciprocity should be strengthened in the studied villages to enhance farmers’ adaptive capacity to drought and water crises.