Understanding the divergences between farmer’s perception and meteorological records regarding climate change: a review

Cristian Rogério Foguesatto (), Felipe Dalzotto Artuzo, Edson Talamini and João Armando Dessimon Machado
Additional contact information
Cristian Rogério Foguesatto: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Felipe Dalzotto Artuzo: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Edson Talamini: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
João Armando Dessimon Machado: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2020, vol. 22, issue 1, No 1, 16 pages

Abstract: Abstract How farmers perceive climate change is linked to whether they are responding and adapting to it. However, often this perception does not correspond with what actually happens. Based on a search of empirical studies carried out in Africa and Asia, this paper analyzes two factors that can influence farmers’ perception regarding climate change: expected utility maximization and availability heuristic. While expected utility maximization refers to an expected change in farmers’ well-being, the availability heuristic is a mental shortcut based on the memory of occurrence of events. Generally, empirical studies show that farmers’ perceptions are aligning with meteorological records regarding an increase in temperature. However, while there are no significant variations in rainfall trends, farmers perceive a reduction in rainfall in the last few years. The recent increase in drought frequency and severity may cause this divergence, because it affects farmers’ well-being, and extreme droughts have a central position in peoples’ memory. In this context, our findings suggest that farmers’ perceptions are influenced by economic and psychological issues. Policymakers, extension workers and developers of climate projects need to pay attention to farm and farmers’ characteristics in order to develop mitigation and/or adaptation practices regarding climate change.

Keywords: Agriculture; Availability heuristic; Climate risk; Expected utility theory; Drought; Global warming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-018-0193-0 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:endesu:v:22:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s10668-018-0193-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-018-0193-0

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().