Linking perceptions of climate change impacts with adaptation: Insights from landowners in Southern Chile

Abstract

Adaptation is recognized as the outcome of a complex mix of individual and institutional factors that shape how society responds to climate change. Adaptation results from a joint decision-making process, where actors simultaneously evaluate the risks associated with climate change into whether or not they should adapt. We develop a model of this joint decision-making process that incorporates risk tolerance to identify what factors influence landowners’ perception and adaptation to climate change in southern Chile. The results are based on 86 in-person interviews, involving the collection of socioeconomic data, risk aversion tests, and semi-structured interviews. We found that while most landowners perceived climate change impacts as a threat, only 60 % had taken any action. Two underlying factors applied to both perception and adaptation: risk tolerance and off-farm incomes. Higher risk tolerance and greater reliance on off-farm incomes reduced people's perception and adaptation to climate change. The presence of climate change-induced impacts positively influenced the implementation of adaptation, while schooling and gender were relevant only in shaping climate change perceptions. Following these results, we suggest developing programs to communicate the real magnitude of climate risks so that landowners better understand the opportunity costs of climate change adaptation, and in that way, avoid/anticipate the need to see impacts on the land in order to act. Along these lines, further investigation of the role off-farm incomes play in adaptation is warranted, where it is simultaneously both a factor in the adaptation process but can also be an adaptation action as well.