What Motivates Farmers’ Adaptation to Climate Change? The Case of Apple Farmers of Shaanxi in China

Past studies showing that barriers to farmers’ adaptation behaviors are focused on their socio-economic factors and resource availability. Meanwhile, psychological and social considerations are sparingly mentioned, especially for the related studies in developing countries. This study investigates the impact of psychological factors and social appraisal on farmers’ behavioral intention to adopt adaptation measures for the aforementioned reason, due to climate change and not to anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on the protection motivation theory, a threat, coping, social appraisal, maladaptation and behavioral intention to adopt adaptation measures (TCSMBI) model was proposed to predict farmers’ adaptation. A structural equation model was then employed to analyze the relationships between variables in the TCSMBI model with 658 apple farmers in Shaanxi province, China. The empirical results showed that threat appraisal and coping appraisal have positive and significant impacts on behavioral intention to climate change. Moreover, threat appraisal reduces the occurrence of maladaptation, and social appraisal tends to have significantly positive impacts on threat appraisal and coping appraisal.