Measuring rice farmers’ risk perceptions and attitude: Evidence from Pakistan

Abstract

The agriculture sector is confronting numerous types of risk. Like other crops’ farmers, rice growers are also facing multifarious challenges, including production and environmental risk. On the one hand, they are suffering from water shortage. On the other hand, if a flood occurs, there is no proper water reservation management, especially in developing countries. Global warming is another erotic topic for agriculture sustainability. To address the growers’ perceptions and their attitudes toward such types of risks, a farm base survey was carried out, and rice farmers were investigated in Pakistan. Methods of equally likely certainty equivalent and risk matrix were applied to investigate the farmers’ risk perceptions and attitude. A probit model was also used to estimate the factors that influence farmers’ perceptions and attitudes toward risks. The outcomes of the study show that flood, input high prices, increasing temperature, and crop diseases are the perceiving risks among rice farmers. Different types of socio-economic factors are influencing farmers’ risk perceptions and their attitudes, such as age, education level, a distance of farms from rivers, and non-farm income. This study provides valuable information to the policymakers and concerning authorities to apprehend agricultural risks among rice farmers and farming sustainability, especially in developing countries.

Keywords:

• Ecological risk
• risk attitude
• risk perceptions
• rice farmers
• Pakistan

Acknowledgment

Authors are very grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments. Moreover, this article is supported by "Hainan Natural Science Foundation (Project No. 717088), Huazhong Agricultural University Scientific & Technological self-innovation foundation (program No. 09002021007), National Science Foundation of China (Project No.71873052) and The National Social Science Fund of China, Project No.15CGL036.

Disclosure statement

All authors are stated no conflict in this article.

Notes

1 PKR denotes “Rupee” the currency of Pakistan