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Farmers’ Perceived Risks of Climate Change and Influencing Factors: A Study in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

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Abstract

Many countries are confronting climate change that threatens agricultural production and farmers’ lives. Farmers’ perceived risks of climate change and factors influencing those perceived risks are critical to their adaptive behavior and well-planned adaptation strategies. However, there is limited understanding of these issues. In this paper, we attempt to quantitatively measure farmers’ perceived risks of climate change and explore the influences of risk experience, information, belief in climate change, and trust in public adaptation to those perceived risks. Data are from structured interviews with 598 farmers in the Mekong Delta. The study shows that perceived risks to production, physical health, and income dimensions receive greater priority while farmers pay less attention to risks to happiness and social relationships. Experiences of the events that can be attributed to climate change increase farmers’ perceived risks. Information variables can increase or decrease perceived risks, depending on the sources of information. Farmers who believe that climate change is actually happening and influencing their family’s lives, perceive higher risks in most dimensions. Farmers who think that climate change is not their concern but the government’s, perceive lower risks to physical health, finance, and production. As to trust in public adaptation, farmers who believe that public adaptive measures are well co-ordinated, perceive lower risks to production and psychology. Interestingly, those who believe that the disaster warning system is working well, perceive higher risks to finance, production, and social relationships. Further attention is suggested for the quality, timing, and channels of information about climate change and adaptation.

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Notes

  1. Although PMT was originally applied in health-risk studies, it has become a general decision-making model dealing with different threats (Maddux 1993) such as nuclear war (Wolf et al. 1986) and water conservation (Kantola et al. 1983).

  2. “Anxiety about personal loss” concerns worries of losing relatives and objects of emotional value such as those left from the ancestors.

  3. “Happiness” refers to the interviewees’ overall wellbeing and contentment. This includes other dimensions of life that are not assessed as part of the remaining 6 risk dimensions assessed here.

  4. We used the definition of climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2001, 2007) and the interpretations of this term in empirical studies (Apata et al. 2009; Barnett 2001; Deressa et al. 2011; Mertz et al. 2009; Schad et al. 2012; Smit et al. 1996; Smit et al. 2000; Thomas et al. 2007; Vedwan and Rhoades 2001). This is what interviewers introduced to farmers: “Climate change refers to any change in climate for an extended period such as decades. Climate change may take several forms such as unusual timing of seasons, changes in temperature and rainfall pattern, more frequent and severe extreme weather events (floods, droughts, storms, etc.), more frequent salinity intrusion, a rise in sea level compared with average sea level for several previous years.”

  5. The most common reason for refusal is that the subjects were busy.

  6. The interviewed farmers are all rice farmers but some of them also have minor livestock production.

  7. The changes will be explained in standard deviation (instead of unit) if using standardized regression coefficients.

  8. Some private adaptive measures used in the Mekong Delta are early planting or harvesting, shortening growing season, changing timing of irrigation, changing timing of fertilizer use, growing a number of different crops, using different varieties, and changing from farming to non-farming activities, etc.

  9. Examples of the public adaptive measures used in the Mekong Delta are propagating disaster warning information through the public media, training flood and storm fighting, building annual flood and storm fighting plan, building and reinforcing embankment and dike to face with severe floods, building residential areas for flood safety, building and circulating planting calendars. These measures are derived from prior FGDs and AOIs conducted in the Mekong Delta.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is part of a PhD research at the University of Adelaide. This PhD research is made possible under the sponsor of AusAID to Hoa Le Dang. Data collection for the research is funded by the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, the University of Adelaide. We are very grateful to the Departments of Agriculture and Rural Development of 6 districts: Long Phu and My Tu (Soc Trang Province), Thap Muoi and Tam Nong (Dong Thap Province), and Duc Hoa and Thanh Hoa (Long An Province) for their great help and support in organising farmer interviews. We would like to thank 20 undergraduate students of Nong Lam University, local guides and farm households in the Mekong Delta in helping and supporting our interviews during December 2011 and January 2012. We thank Alison-Jane Hunter for editing the manuscript and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Waite Campus, Urrbrae, SA, 5064, Australia

    Hoa Le Dang, Elton Li & Ian Nuberg

  2. Faculty of Economics, Nong Lam University, Linh Trung Ward, Thu Duc District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Hoa Le Dang

  3. School of Marketing, University of South Australia, City West Campus, North Terrace, SA, 5001, Australia

    Johan Bruwer

  4. School of Psychology, Charles Sturt University, Locked Bag 588, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2678, Australia

    Johan Bruwer

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  1. Hoa Le Dang
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Correspondence to Hoa Le Dang.

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Le Dang, H., Li, E., Nuberg, I. et al. Farmers’ Perceived Risks of Climate Change and Influencing Factors: A Study in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Environmental Management 54, 331–345 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-014-0299-6

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