Non-cognitive skills and climate change adaptation: empirical evidence from Ghana’s pineapple farmers

ABSTRACT

In the context of accelerating climate change, it is important to understand the determinants of farmers’ adaptive capacity. Here, we focus on the role of non-cognitive skills, including perceived self-efficacy, locus of control beliefs, and time preferences. Our sample consists of 398 pineapple farmers in Southern Ghana and we rely on instrumental variables to identify the causal effect. We find that those with higher non-cognitive skills are more likely to respond to the adversities of climate change by adopting a climate smart technology (mulching). When exploring why, we find that they perceive their costs of innovation adoption as lower.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change adaptation
• cognitive and non-cognitive skills
• human capital

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

David Wuepper is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His main research interests relate to how non-cognitive skills, social capital, and development policies affect agricultural production and marketing choices, as well as how labels affect consumption choices, and what is the direct economic value of protecting cultural heritage. He has published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Food Policy, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, the Annual Review of Resource Economics, amongst others.

David Zilberman is professor at UC Berkeley, USA. His main research interest are the economics of production technology and risk in agriculture, agricultural and environmental policy, marketing and the economics of climate change, biofuels, and biotechnology. He has published in Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, the Annual Review of Resource Economics, amongst others.

Johannes Sauer is professor at TU Munich, Germany. His main research interest relates to issues of production and natural resource economics, especially the diffusion and effects of innovations, and the evaluation of agri-environmental programs. He has published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Food Policy, amongst others.