Farmers perceptions of, ex ante and ex post adaptations to drought: Empirical evidence from maize farmers in China

With a large-scale household survey data of maize farmers in China, this study examines how farmers perceptions of drought severity influence their adaptation strategies using endogenous switching probit models. Both ex ante and ex post adaptations are modeled. The empirical results first suggest that the impacts of farmers perceptions of drought severity on their ex ante and ex post adaptive behaviors are different. A farmer perceiving an increasing trend of drought severity has a 7.3% higher probability to use drought tolerant variety as ex ante adaptation, while a 4.8% higher probability of irrigation than those of other farmers. On average, farmers who use drought tolerant maize variety have a 18% lower probability to irrigate, which indicates that the ex-ante adaptation, using drought tolerant maize variety, reduces the need to irrigate as ex-post reaction to drought. Our results lend more support to the importance of farmers perceptions of drought severity to their adaptations. Our results also the importance in considering both ex ante and ex post adaptations in policy making. Acknowledgement : This work was supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (71773003, 71303226, 71742002), the Ministry of Science and Technology, China (2012CB955700).