Assessing systematic biases in farmers’ local weather change perceptions
Date
2024-11-04
Authors
Arora, Gaurav
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Nature Research
Abstract
Scientific data concerning climate change are critical for designing mitigation and adaptation strategies. Equally important is how stakeholders perceive climate change because perceptions influence decision-making. In this paper, we employ spatially-delineated primary surveys to evaluate weather perception biases among corn and soybean farmers located on western frontier of the U.S. Corn Belt where substantial loss of grassland has been documented. We characterize farmers’ perception biases by measuring the gap between survey-based perception reports for three distinct weather indicators (i.e., temperature, precipitation and drought) and corresponding meteorological evidence. About 70% farmers in our sample misperceive past weather changes. Three-fourths of these misperceiving farmers over-estimate local temperatures and drought frequency and 40% of them under-estimate precipitation trends relative to past records. We further find evidence that farmers’ weather change perceptions are systematically biased in a manner that would justify past land use decisions. Particularly, higher cropping incidence on previously protected grasslands effected more farmers to under-perceive drier conditions and over-perceive wetter conditions. Our investigation of perception biases across distinct weather indicators with a reference to past economic decisions enriches the understanding of climate change perceptions and related policies.
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Assessing systematic biases in farmers’ local weather change perceptions
(Copyright 2023, The Authors,
2023-05-23)
Scientific data concerning climate change are critical for designing mitigation and adaptation strategies. Equally important is how stakeholders perceive climate change because perceptions influence decision-making. However, perceptions may not be consistent with data. In this paper, we employed spatially-delineated primary surveys of corn and soybean farmers located on western frontier of the U.S. Corn Belt to analyse biases observed in their local weather change perceptions as compared with meteorological data. We found systematic biases in farmers’ perceptions of past changes for three distinct weather indicators: temperature, precipitation, and drought frequency. Farmers predominantly over-estimated temperature and drought levels and under-estimated precipitation levels relative to the past data records. Farmers’ age and income, not education levels, were statistically significantly associated with their weather perceptions. A Chi-squared test of independence provided evidence that farmer misperceptions about past changes in precipitation and droughts were correlated with select land use and farm management decisions, which is consistent with the notion of “motivated beliefs”. Comparative analysis of past and future weather change perceptions revealed a tendency of regression to the mean. Our findings suggest that it is important to consider subjective weather beliefs in addition to historical data or scientific predictions in policy design process.
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Comments
This article is published as Arora, G., Feng, H. Assessing systematic biases in farmers’ local weather change perceptions. Sci Rep 14, 26641 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-76327-8.
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