Psycho-Socioeconomic Analysis of Rural Farm Communities’ Risk Perception and Adaptive Behavioural Responses to Climate Change and Variability in the Atankwidi River Basin of Northern Ghana

Abstract

Recent efforts to facilitate private climate change adaptation have not been effective due to their exclusive consideration of socioeconomic or contextual factors as the drivers of adaptive behaviour. A growing body of research suggests that psychological factors in addition to socioeconomic variables must be considered to better explain the adaptive actions by individuals. The main objective of this study is to analyse how climate change and variability-induced water stress affect the perceptions and adaptive behaviours of rural farmers in Ghana. In addition, it will explore rural communities’ social capital for collective adaptation efforts. This study builds on the Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change (MPPACC) and combines it with the Trans-Theoretical Model (TTM) to conduct a psycho-socioeconomic analysis at the household level. The study is based on survey data of selected farm households and focus group discussions in the Atankwidi River Basin of Ghana in addition to secondary data sources. The data is analysed mainly through descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression approaches. The study concludes that despite the widespread perceptions of unfavourable climate change among rural farm households, many famers do not correspondingly implement observable adaptive practices. Furthermore, the study finds that adopting a psycho-socioeconomic analysis offers a better explanation of farmers’ adaptive decisions. Moreover, the psycho-socioeconomic modelling approach enables the identification of relevant factors that need to be addressed in order to arouse farmers’ adaptive behaviour to an action stage. Also the study finds no clear relationship between the level of social capital and collective action for adaptation among the studied communities. Finally, suggestions for policy reforms and future research are outlined.