Smallholder farmers’ climate change cognition, adaptation practices and perceived adaptation efficacy in the Yangtze River Basin, China

Climate change adaptation is a dynamic process that involves prior cognition, actual action, and subsequent perceived efficacy. However, few studies have focused on whether measures influence perceived adaptation efficacy or even provided comprehensive conceptualizations of the links among cognition, behaviors, and efficacy. This study developed an integrated conceptual framework and employed econometric models to determine their influencing relationships using household survey data from the Yangtze River Basin of China. Our findings reveal that farmers perceive that they maintain negative risk and adaptation cognition, although they have high perceived adaptation efficacy. Most importantly, climate change cognition has significant impacts on six kinds of adaptation practices. Perceived adaptation efficacies are only positively influenced by agro-technical management, agro-environmental improvement, financial support, and external help. Crop adjustment lowers land adaptation efficacy, and livelihood transformation reduces the efficacy of family, crop, and land. Corresponding policy recommendations are made to help improve targeted and dynamic adaptation capacity. Our ideas and findings may be complementary to existing research and easily repeatable for future investigations about climate change adaptation worldwide.