Factors influencing farmers’ adaptation strategies in confronting the drought in Iran

Moslem Savari () and Mohammad Shokati Amghani
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Moslem Savari: Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University of Khuzestan
Mohammad Shokati Amghani: University of Tehran

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2021, vol. 23, issue 4, No 9, 4949-4972

Abstract: Abstract While the literature on adaptation to drought has increasingly focused on investigating farmers’ understanding of drought, no comprehensive study has been conducted on behavior determinants and farmers’ adaptation strategies so far. To address this research gap, the current study was performed to investigate the effective factors and determinants on applying adaptation strategies by farmers in Iran. The statistical sample of the study included 430 farmers in East Azerbaijan province (located in northwest of Iran) selected through multistage sampling method. Study results after categorization of adaptation strategies (AS) first indicated that, the farmers under study suffer from a lack of high adaptation but in order to add more accuracy and grouping farmers’ strategies in drought condition, exploratory factor analysis was applied in which they were categorized as self-control, active and integrated strategies. Next, structural equation modeling was adopted to study the effective factors on applying AS by farmers confronted with the drought. The results showed that, social, environmental, infrastructure, and economic factors exert a positively significant effect on selecting the AS whereas, human-related factors were proved to have an insignificant effect on adopting the AS. The results associated with structural equations indicated that, effective factors account for 93.3% of variance in application of AS which is a highly considerable rate. Indeed, these results revealed high importance of social factor, environmental factor, infrastructure factor and economic factors in applying the AS among the farmers. Therefore, our findings offered solutions as to how to reduce risks in farmers’ activities during drought conditions to improve adaptation behavior of Iranian farmers.

Keywords: Adaptation; Climate change; Sustainability of livelihood; Vulnerability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1007/s10668-020-00798-8

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