Configurational pathways to farmers’ climate adaptation behavior and their loss-reduction effects: empirical evidence from China
Abstract
Climate change increasingly threatens agricultural production, making it urgent to promote farmers’ adaptation to safeguard food security and livelihood stability. Drawing on the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF), this study combines fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and propensity score matching (PSM) to examine the livelihood-capital configurations that drive farmers’ climate adaptation behavior and assess their loss-reduction effects. The results show that configurations involving high information, financial, natural, and human capital promote climate adaptation behavior, while high social capital exhibits a substitution effect. In contrast, configurations characterized by low social, human, and physical capital lead to low-level climate adaptation behavior, revealing causal asymmetry. Moreover, configurations leading to high-level climate adaptation behavior differ in their loss-reduction performance, with the combination of high information, financial, and physical capital producing the most robust effect. These findings provide configurational evidence for targeted climate adaptation policies in resource-constrained rural areas.