Awareness of climate change's impacts and motivation to adapt are not enough to drive action: A look of Puerto Rican farmers after Hurricane Maria

Abstract

Understanding how perceptions around motivation, capacity, and climate change’s impacts relate to the adoption of adaptation practices in light of experiences with extreme weather events is important in assessing farmers’ adaptive capacity. However, very little of this work has occurred in islands, which may have different vulnerabilities and capacities for adaptation. Data of surveyed farmers throughout Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (n = 405, 87% response rate) were used in a structural equation model to explore the extent to which their adoption of agricultural practices and management strategies was driven by perceptions of motivation, vulnerability, and capacity as a function of their psychological distance of climate change. Our results show that half of farmers did not adopt any practice or strategy, even though the majority perceived themselves capable and motivated to adapt to climate change, and understood their farms to be vulnerable to future extreme events. Furthermore, adoption was neither linked to these adaptation perceptions, nor to their psychological distance of climate change, which we found to be both near and far. Puerto Rican farmers’ showed a broad awareness of climate change’s impacts both locally and globally in different dimensions (temporal, spatial, and social), and climate distance was not linked to reported damages from Hurricane Maria or to previous extreme weather events. These results suggest that we may be reaching a tipping point for extreme events as a driver for climate belief and action, especially in places where there is a high level of climate change awareness and continued experience of compounded impacts. Further, high perceived capacity and motivation are not linked to actual adaptation behaviors, suggesting that broadening adaptation analyses beyond individual perceptions and capacities as drivers of climate adaptation may give us a better understanding of the determinants to strengthen farmers’ adaptive capacity.

Puerto Rican Farmers' Obstacles Toward Recovery and Adaptation Strategies After Hurricane Maria: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding Adaptive Capacity

“…While we expected (H2) to see perceived capacity be a notable factor predicting intended adoption as reflected in the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), as well as perceived vulnerability, we only find this significant in intention to adopt ecological transition practices (Model 6). These results further support that perceptual factors around climate change may not be pivotal in advancing adaptation in places where shocks are consistently experienced (Rodríguez-Cruz and Niles, 2021). On the other hand, being a "bona fide" farmer decreased likelihood of intending to adopt ecological transition practices (Model 7), which may help in increasing farmers likelihood of recovering their farms after a hurricane (Holt-Giménez, 2002;Rosset et al, 2011).…”

“…Thus, we expect that variables reflecting these factors will be significant in both actual and intended adoption (H1). Furthermore, though research has shown that perceptual factors are not pivotal to Puerto Rican farmers' adoption of practices (Rodríguez-Cruz and Niles, 2021), we expect these factors to be related to intended practices (H2). Lastly, it is known that Hurricane Maria caused significant damage in Puerto Rico, and that subsequent recovery efforts failed to safeguard lives and wellbeing (Santos-Burgoa et al, 2018;Bonilla, 2020).…”

“…adaptive capacity, further providing us a better picture of how broader structures, beyond individual attributes, effect action (Rodríguez-Cruz and Niles, 2021). Farmers' decision-making around climate change adaptation has been studied from various disciplinary perspectives (Prokopy et al, 2019;Ranjan et al, 2019;Foguesatto et al, 2020), with mixed conclusions on the extent to which adaptive capacities impact adaptation outcomes.…”

“…Though these studies have shown the importance of integrating different aspects of adaptive capacity, there is still a gap in triangulating the role of individual and structural aspects of adaptation behaviors (Foguesatto et al, 2020;Wilson et al, 2020;Rodríguez-Cruz and Niles, 2021). Much of the literature has either focused on the intention to adopt or actual adoption, and has not considered both within the same population .…”

“…Though both impacts decimated Puerto Rico's agricultural sector, farmers have experienced a significant quantity of natural hazards since 2017, such as intense storms, and severe droughts (Gould, 2015;Díaz et al, 2018;Castro-Rivera, 2018, 2019;Rodríguez-Cruz and Niles, 2021). Even a category one hurricane can easily damage local agriculture.…”