Analyzing farmers' drought risk management behavior: Evidence from Iran (original) (raw)

To control and reduce the effects of drought, it is essential for farmers to do drought risk management so as to cope with climate change. The purpose of this study was to “assessing farmers' drought risk management behavior (FDRMB) in downstream of Karkheh Dam basin, Iran”. For this purpose, the “protection motivation theory (PMT)” was used to measure FDRMB. This theory consists of six variables i.e. “perceived vulnerability (PV)”, “perceived severity (PS)”, “self-efficacy (SE)”, “response cost (RC)”, “response efficacy (RC)”, and “intention (IN)”. This research included a descriptive-correlational and causal relationship that was conducted by a survey. The study population included farmers who were members in the water user association in downstream of Karkheh Dam (N = 3668), out of which, 350 users were sampled by Krejcie and Morgan's table and by the stratified random sampling method, respectively. In accordance with the PMT, for the variables affecting FDRMB a causal framework was designed. Findings from the path analysis indicated that the six variables in PMT might explain 0.473 of the FDRMB variance. Besides, SE had the highest effect in FDRMB (β = 0.503). As a general conclusion, policies need to make farmers take their own risk management decisions and have access to a variety of tools and strategies.