Farmers' Climate Change Risk Perceptions: An Application of the Exchangeability Method

Using the exchangeability method, we quantitatively elicit Italian farmers' short- and long-run risk perceptions concerning key crop loss hazards whose relevance depends upon climate developments: hail, powdery mildew for winegrowers and apple dieback for apple farmers. We show that long-run perceptions are significantly higher than short-run perceptions and identify climate change beliefs and experience with crop damages as critical factors in explaining this difference. From a policy prospective, our results suggest that an effective outreach service would benefit from offering farmers first-hand on-farm experience with crop risk and a “segmented” approach that takes into consideration farmers’ climate change beliefs.