A certain amount of climate change is inevitable. Agriculture is already severely affected by climatic changes above the norm, and farmers around the world have to work differently under the impact of extreme weather events and changing weather conditions (e.g. Olesen & Bindi 2002; Zhu et al. 2015). Nevertheless, farmers adapt to climatic changes and future climate variability to different degrees (Iglesias et al. 2007; Schiermeier 2015). How can we account for this variance and what can promote a higher degree of agricultural adaptation to climate change in Europe’s agricultural sector?
It has been pointed out that empirical research on adaptation lacks in understanding of individual reactions to climate change, and is only beginning to address the importance of measurable and alterable psychological factors determining adaptation (e.g. Smit et al. 1996; Grothmann & Patt 2005; Berrang-Ford, Ford, Paterson 2011; Zhu et al 2015). I aim at presenting a framework for thinking about individual choices for adaptation action that builds on an identification of regulatory incentives for agricultural adaptation in the EU, and presents assumptions on the behavioural factors that drive adaptation. My results are based on an assessment of survey-based experiments, and farmers’ responses to different incentives. This encompasses three interacting research interests: 1: As bottom-up engagement gets more important with polycentric governance structures (Keohane and Victor 2011; Ostrom 2009; Rayner 2010), I am interested if incentives for adaptive action, set by the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), result in a high individual willingness to adapt. 2: My research questions, in how far the framing of climate change influences engagement and behavioural change. Finally, 3: I seek to account for discrepancies between the intended effects and the actual outcomes of the CAP.
