Psychological dimensions of climate change: perceptions, collective efficacy, and responses in Berehet District, north Shoa, Ethiopia

Desalegn Yayeh Ayal (), Kassahun Tilahun, Kassahun Ture and Tadesse Terefe Zeleke
Additional contact information
Desalegn Yayeh Ayal: Addis Ababa University
Kassahun Tilahun: Debre Berhan University
Kassahun Ture: Addis Ababa University
Tadesse Terefe Zeleke: Addis Ababa University

Climatic Change, 2021, vol. 165, issue 1, No 32, 18 pages

Abstract: Abstract Human behavior is responsible for global climate change. The impact of climate change is worse in poor countries like Ethiopia whose agriculture heavily relies on rainfall. The aim of this research was to assess farmers’ perceptions and their collective and individual response mechanisms to the impacts of climate variability and extremes.A sequential mixed research design was applied to conduct the research. In the first phase, 22 key informants and 32 FGD participants were purposely selected for the qualitative data. Three decades of areal gridded temperature and rainfall data were collected from the National Meteorological Agency. During the second phase, quantitative data were collected from 124 randomly selected farmers through questionnaire. Appropriate qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques were employed. Accordingly, the study revealed that the district has been experiencing a declining rainfall and increasing temperature. Persistent drought, limited surface and underground water, crop pests, and animal diseases were found to be the main impacts of climate change that harmed agricultural productivity. The traditional causal attribution of climate change to God’s wrath by farmers is decreasing. However, farmers’ collective efficacy to reverse the impact of drought was found to be low. Social loan services, borrowing seeds from relatives, working through joint collaboration (Jegie) have been major indigenous responses. Planting drought resistant crop varieties, rainwater harvesting, destocking, cut and carry livestock feeding, and soil and water conservation measures were the common planned adaptation responses to with stand the impacts of climate variability. Climate variability, especially the recurrent drought events erodes the farmers’ collective efficacy to manage the climate change risk. The introduction of drought resistant crop & livestock varieties, and livelihood diversification intervention could play crucial role to restore their adaptive capacity and confidence.

Keywords: Climate variability; Psychology; Vulnerability; Farmers’ responses; Collective efficacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-021-03033-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:165:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-021-03033-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03033-z

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().