Farmers’ Adaptation to Extreme Weather: Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

Climate change is a huge challenge for agricultural production. Climate-adaptive technology is an effective measure for farmers to adapt to climate change and improve their ability to cope with natural disasters. The low adoption rate of climate-adaptive technology has become an important factor restricting the sustainable development of China’s agriculture. Extreme weather may affect farmers' decisions to adopt climate-adaptive technology. This paper uses the survey data of 622 apple growers in Shaanxi Province to study the impact of extreme weather on farmers’ climate-adaptive technology adoption behavior and its mechanism. The results show that extreme weather has a significant positive effect on farmers’ adoption of climate-adaptive technology. This result still holds after robustness checks such as changing the measurement methods of key variables. In terms of the mechanism, one is that extreme weather can improve farmers’ risk perception and promote their adoption of climate-adaptive technology; the other is that extreme weather can promote farmers’ participation in credit, which in turn promotes their adoption of climate-adaptive technology. Heterogeneity analysis shows that compared with areas without policy incentives, extreme weather has a greater effect on farmers’ climate-adaptive technology adoption behavior in areas with policy incentives. Overall, the results suggest that promoting farmers’ adoption of climate-adaptive technology and understanding how well farmers respond to climate shocks can inform policy design and help reduce risks to agricultural production from extreme weather.