Socio-demographic determinants of farmers’ beliefs about climate change cause in the Sudanian zone of Benin

Abstract

Understanding farmers’ beliefs on climate change is crucial as it drives the adaptation strategies that they might adopt. This paper investigates farmers’ beliefs on climate change in the Sudan Savannah Zone of Benin, a region heavily reliant on rain-fed agriculture. The multinomial logit model is applied to cross-sectional data collected through a survey of 60 randomly selected farm households. The findings suggested that 33.33%, 31.67%, 21.67%, and 13.33% of the farm households believe that climate change is due to human activities, to natural changes in the environment, gods anger, and to both human activities and natural changes in the environment, respectively. Moreover, the estimation results of the determinants of climate change cause indicate that the gender of the household head, the ethnic group, and household size influence significantly climate change beliefs. Based on the findings, information on the fact that climate change is not only due to natural changes in the environment, but is also due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases should be provided to farmers. This paper contributes to the literature by analyzing what farmers believe as causes of climate change which is beyond climate change perception. Moreover, the variable ethnic group and household size are found for the first time to our knowledge to determine climate change beliefs.