Risk Perceivers. Risk Deniers. Confused Moderates

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1 Identifying climate change risk postures within Scottish farming To meet internationally agreed targets on greenhouse gas emissions, policy makers have supported the voluntary adoption of climate saving technologies. Uptake relies on positive attitudes towards risk within the target population. This brief explores the heterogeneity of Scottish dairy farmers based on 8 attitude statements related to climate change risk, using a latent class clustering approach. Three climate based risk postures, identified for Scottish farmers Risk Perceivers Risk Deniers Confused Moderates majority of farmers could be classified as 'confused moderates', who indicate no strong opinion towards the possible future impacts of climate change. Two further classes emerge, the deniers, mostly disagree with the statements related to climate change effects and the 'risk perceivers', who have a high probability of agreeing with the potential and present negative effects of climate change and farming. We find a range of farm level and information usage factors determine membership of these classes. If farmers have a higher level of education or intend to pass the farm onto a family member they are least likely to be a climate change denier. Reliance on farm and family social networks as a source of environmental information leads to a higher likelihood that farmers will become a risk perceiver. However, more frequent use of Government and publically-available environmental information leads to a higher likelihood of becoming a confused moderate.

2 It seems that there is a high degree of confusion over climate change within this sample of farmers and we conclude that focus is required on emphasizing and decoupling the messages related to climate change from other profit related or environmental messages. Focusing effort on increasing social capital, through farmer and family networks, would also prove to be an effective means of transmitting the risks to agricultural production of future climate change. Barnes, A.P., Islam, M. and Toma, L. (2012). Heterogeneity in Climate Change Risk Perception amongst Dairy Farmers: A Latent Class Clustering Analysis. Risk Analysis (Submitted). Further details: Dr Andrew Barnes, Carbon Management Centre Behavioural Change and Innovation Group, SRUC, Edinburgh, EH9 3JG. Andrew.Barnes@sruc.ac.uk

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4 Investigating Farmer Perceptions towards Climate Change: A segmentation approach To understand the behaviours of farmers and how to begin to communicate with them we investigated dairy farmer perceptions towards Climate change. This identified 6 distinct segments operating within the industry. Figure 1. Six Segments of Farmer Perceptions Regulation Sceptic Commercial Ecologist Innovator Climate Change Perceptions Disengaged Positivist Negativist regulation sceptic - high level of scepticism towards regulation related to the environment and dairy farming generally. This tends to indicate that their approach to production is perceived as being constrained by these regulations. With respect to the specific outlook of this type towards climate change, it seems that they do not expect this issue to affect their future production decisions. commercial ecologist - members of this cluster agree with statements related to production, profit and resource maximisation. y also have a markedly strong level of agreement with statements related to ecological values. Farmers within this type expect the impact of climate change to be predominantly negative. When coupled with their underlying openness towards the environment it would be expected that members of this group would be more pro-active. However, farmers within this cluster do not see climate change as a large enough threat to change their business approach. innovator - members of this cluster display a strong propensity to embrace innovative behaviour. Naturally, the adoption of new techniques and methods can be coupled with their agreement with profit motives as a means of enhancing efficiency for reducing costs. When considered against their negative outlook towards the impact of climate change, members would be more likely to adopt the innovative practices and technologies proposed to negate these effects. se

5 technologies though must satisfy their requirements for profit and resource maximisation. Hence, this group provide a stronger argument for focusing on winwin technology, for example adoption of best practice guidance levels for nitrogen application. negativist - members of this cluster are mostly typified by their negative outlook towards the impacts of climate change. A number of other studies have found passive types within land use decision makers. disengaged this group express no strong opinion towards climate change and therefore are the most disengaged of the six clusters presented here. This also presents problems for information providers to create any type of behavioural change. This type has not been directly explored per se but have usually provided a counterfactual or referent group for measuring levels of participation within environmental and conservation management programmes. low level of belief that conservation was a legitimate use for land was identified as a main reason for this disengagement. positivist - members of this cluster are distinguished by their agreement that climate change will impact positively in the future. ir expectations rely on the future improvements in yield and income and may explain their equally strong response to their lack of proactively managing climate change impacts. Members of this group are sceptical towards regulation but have no agreement with other statements related to innovation, profit or ecological improvement. Understanding these types helps us to tailor our communication programs to realise behavioural change. Further work will explore how each cluster will respond to different messages and media to optimise impact. Barnes, A.P. and Toma, L. (2012). A typology of dairy farmer perceptions towards climate change. Climatic Change 112(2), Further details: Dr Andrew Barnes, Innovation and Behavioural Change Team, SRUC, Edinburgh, EH9 3JG