Evaluating factors affecting adoption of climate-smart agricultural strategies with emphasis on the characteristics of social and capital psychological

Climate change led to reduced agricultural production and income in recent years. Farmers in Iran are very vulnerable to climate change such as drought and depletion of water resources. Despite the increasing vulnerability and poverty of farmers as a result of the spread of climate change, adopting climate-smart agricultural strategies have not been sufficiently implemented by Iranian farmers. In this study, the factors affecting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural strategies to climate change in Fars province were evaluated. Data were collected through a questionnaire from 443 farmers during the years 2019-2020 in four different climatic regions of Fars province. Accordingly, farmers' climate-smart agricultural strategies were estimated in three groups: Nutrient and Water-smart strategies, conserving or enhancing soil fertility-smart strategies, and a combination of these two segmentation strategies and a multinomial logit model to examine the factors affecting the acceptance of these strategies. Reviewing the existing literature, the factors affecting the adoption of climate-smart agricultural strategies including household characteristics, farm characteristics, socio-economic characteristics, social capital characteristics, and psychological characteristics were defined. The results showed that younger farmers with more access to credit and higher participation in social groups, as well as greater awareness, beliefs, and risk perception of climate change are more likely to adopt climate-smart agricultural strategies. On the other hand, larger farm sizes and higher farm incomes guarantee farmers' participation in adopting climate-smart agricultural strategies in the region. In addition, farmers who adopt smarter climate agricultural strategies later will be less likely to adopt water conservation strategies.