Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol Farmers’ perceptions of climate change and their likely responses in Danish agriculture Bryndís Arndal Woods a,c, ⁎ , Helle Ørsted Nielsen b , Anders Branth Pedersen b , Dadi Kristofersson c a NORD-STAR: the Nordic Center of Excellence for Strategic Adaptation Research b Aarhus University, Frederiksborgvej 399, 4000 Roskilde, Denmark c University of Iceland, Sæmundargata 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Climate change Adaptation Agriculture Farmers Experience Behavior ABSTRACT Farmers are accustomed to coping with year-to-year changes in climate, but climate change is expected to accelerate the need and magnitude of farmers’ adaptation (Wheeler and Tiffin, 2009). Based on a survey of farmers across Denmark (1053 responses), this paper assesses how farmers’ perceive climate change, weigh its attendant risks, and envision the barriers to adaptation as these factors stand to affect their likelihood to undertake adaptive action in the Global North. Descriptive statistics and an ordered probit model were used to disentangle the magnitude and direction of the cognitive factors underpinning farmers’ likelihood to adapt. We also differentiate between adaptation to positive and negative potential impacts of climate change and provide important new insights on loss aversion and, more specifically, the conditions under which loss aversion may give way to a preference for gains. Our results indicate that Danish farmers are not terribly concerned about climate change impacts and perceive many barriers to adaptation, yet they indicate a moderate likelihood to undertake adaptive action in the future, particularly to potential opportunities from climate change impacts. However, we also find that the more concerned a farmer is about climate change, the more he is likely to adapt in response to negative climate impacts - the balance between loss aversion and gain preferences appears to depend on context. In either case, Danish farmers appear to prefer incremental and flexible adaptations in the face of uncertain future climate change impacts. 1. Introduction The impacts of climate change have been studied extensively, and most indicate major impacts on agriculture (see e.g. Glantz et al., 2009; FAO, 2016). However, climate change is expected to affect agriculture very differently in different parts of the world (Parry et al., 1999; Glantz et al., 2009). In Europe, agricultural productivity is expected to increase in northern Europe and decrease in southern Europe as a result of climate change (Iglesias et al., 2012; Olesen et al., 2007). Productivity increases in northern Europe would result from the introduction of new crop species and varieties, higher crop production, the expansion of suitable cropping areas, and a longer growing season (Olesen and Bindi, 2002)(Olesen and Bindi, 2002). Situated in northern Europe, Denmark is therefore expected to experience increased opportunities as well as negative impacts from climate change in its agricultural sector. Decision making theory suggests that decision makers react differently to threats and opportunities (Kahnemann and Tversky, 1974; Kahneman, 2012; Patt and Zeckhauser, 2000); yet, the climate adapta- tion literature has largely ignored the fact that climate change impacts may be both positive and negative by focusing by and large on “rural, resource-dependent communities of developing countries” where cli- mate change impacts on agriculture are expected to be overwhelmingly negative (Wise et al., 2014; Mertz et al., 2009; Deressa et al., 2011; Tambo and Abdoulaye, 2012; Dang et al., 2014; Barnes and Toma, 2012). It is therefore important to conduct adaptation studies in different contexts where climate change will have different impacts. Regardless of whether the impacts of climate change on Northern European agriculture are predominately beneficial or detrimental, the lion’s share of adaptation will depend on autonomous adaptive action by farmers, which the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defines as the “ongoing implementation of existing knowledge and technology by farmers themselves” in response to experienced or expected changes in climate (2007; Leclere et al., 2013). However, farmers’ adaptive decisions are affected by more than just climatic factors; socioeconomic and market considerations are also important. In addition, decision makers are more likely to look for incremental changes when facing complex decisions (Lindblom, 1959). Previous studies of farmer decision-making, based on qualitative inter- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.04.007 Received 11 May 2015; Received in revised form 11 March 2017; Accepted 2 April 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: bryndis.woods@gmail.com (B.A. Woods), hon@envs.au.dk (H.Ø. Nielsen), abp@envs.au.dk (A.B. Pedersen), dmk@hi.is (D. Kristofersson). Land Use Policy 65 (2017) 109–120 0264-8377/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK