Farmers' attitudes regarding climate change: How risk awareness and perception effects adaptive capacity?

Social and behavioural sciences have discussed and debated associative processing methods and the nature, extent, significance, and influence of personal extreme weather experience over the past decade to understand how it affects adaptive capacity. Local perceptions provide important baseline information for understanding individual exposure to climate risks, which are essential for effective policy formulation and implementation. Deepen on farmers’ perceptions, considering risk awareness, is fundamental for two main reasons: as a key component of the socio-political context and as the first step for behaviour transformation and attitude change. Some authors understand risk awareness as of the first step before developing any resilience-building process but also as a requirement that must be met during the resilience development process because it drives transformation. Likewise, risk perception is how individuals receive information or stimuli from their environment, transform it into psychological awareness, and (re)act accordingly. Perception varies with the individual’s past experiences and the present sets or attitudes act through values, needs, memories, moods, social circumstances, and expectations. Farmers’ awareness and perception towards climate change reflect their judgments and may affect their adaptation and mitigation behaviour. Consequently, if farmers are not aware of climate change risks, they will not respond to them. In this work, a review on farmers’ awareness, perceived impacts, and adaptation measures regarding climate change is reported to identify the main statements and driving factors affecting farmers’ behaviour. We analysed a portfolio of 435 articles collected from WoS and Scopus databases between 2010-2020 using a two- tier method: a bibliometrics analysis coupled with a systematic review. We outlined main gaps and drivers to deepening the relevant areas that need more investigation to reduce farming vulnerability.