Farmers’ Perception Of Climate Change And Its Influencing Factors In High-frigid Ecological Vulnerable Region

Global climate change has increased the vulnerability of natural ecosystems and brought a huge challenge to human being, how to adapt to climate change has become a hot spot in the world. The farmers who rely on natural resources for livelihoods is one of the vulnerable groups to adapt to climate change. Climate change has a serious negative impact on the farmers’ livelihood, especially in the high-frigid ecologically vulnerable region. Perception of climate change is the basis of climate change adaptation, clearing the features of climate change perception of farmers is conducive to a better understanding of their response action. Selecting Gannan plateau as the study area, based on 539 household survey data and the MPPACC(Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change), built the index of the farmers’ perception of climate change, this paper analyzes the features of farmers’ perception to climate change. Then using the econometric model analyzes the key factors that affect the farmers’ perception of climate change, and constructs a path model to analyze how these factors influence farmers’ climate change risk perceptions and adaptive perception. The results show that:(1) Farmers’ perception of temperature change is more accurate than the perception of precipitation change,79.96% of farmers have sensed accurately the trend of rising temperatures over the past 30 years, which is consistent with the meteorological data, and only 36.92% of farmers have sensed the trend of rising precipitation, which is inconsistent with the actual meteorological data; At the same time, farmers have a deep memory of the influential and larger scale extreme weather that happened in recent years.(2) Farmers’ severity perception, probability perception, adaptation efficacy perception and adaptation costs perception of climate change are strong, but the self-efficiency perception of climate change is weak, the index of their severity perception, probability perception, adaptation efficacy perception, self-efficacy perceptions and adaptation cost perception are 3.76, 3.34, 3.43, 2.85, 3.53 respectively. And these perception is the strongest in farming area, next in the planting-pasturing area, the pure pasturing area is the weakest.(3) Farmer’s adaptive capacity, climate change information, farmers’ trust of social discourse, and adaptation incentives directly influenced farmers’ climate change perception. In addition, climate change information influenced farmers’ adaptive capacity. Trust of social discourse and the adaptation incentive influenced farmers’ climate change information and their adaptive capacity.In conclusion, based on the key factors that influence farmers’ climate change perception, we developed policy recommendations in order to improve the accuracy of farmers’ climate change perceptions and the effectiveness of their adaptive behavior.