The effect of risk, ambiguity, and coordination on farmers’ adaptation to climate change: A framed field experiment

Francisco Alpizar Rodriguez, Fredrik Carlsson and Maria Naranjo ()
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Maria Naranjo: Environment for Development Center, Tropical Agricultural and Higher Education Center (CATIE), Postal: Turrialba, Costa Rica

No 382, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: The risk of loses of income and productive means due to adverse weather associated to climate change can significantly differ between farmers sharing a productive landscape. It is important to learn more about how farmers react to different levels of risk, under measurable and unmeasurable uncertainty. Moreover, the costs associated to investments in reduced vulnerability to climatic events are likely to exhibit economies of scope. We explore these issues using a framed field experiment that captures realistically the main characteristics of production, and the likely weather related loses of premium coffee farmers in Tarrazu, Costa Rica. Given that the region recently was severely hit by an extreme, albeit very infrequent, climatic event, we expected to observe, and found high levels of risk aversion, but we do observe farmers making trade offs under different risk levels. Although hard to disentangle at first sight given the high level of risk aversion, we find that farmer’s opt more frequently for safe options in a setting characterized by unknown risk. Finally, we find that farmers to a large extent are able to coordinate their decisions in order to achieve a lower cost of adaptation, and that communication among farmers strongly facilitates coordination.

Keywords: Risk aversion; ambiguity aversion; technology adoption; climate change; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D81 H41 Q16 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2009-09-21
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env, nep-exp, nep-res and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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http://hdl.handle.net/2077/21101 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effect of Risk, Ambiguity and Coordination on Farmers’ Adaptation to Climate Change: A Framed Field Experiment (2010)
Working Paper: The Effect of Risk, Ambiguity and Coordination on Farmers’ Adaptation to Climate Change: A Framed Field Experiment (2010)
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