Which is more critical in predicting farmers' adaptation and mitigation towards climate change: Rational decision or moral norm factors

Rational decision or moral norm factors are often used to explain pro-environmental behavior. However, the types of factors that influence farmers' high-cost production behavior (climate change adaptation and mitigation) have not been explored. In response, this study constructed competitive models from multi-theoretical perspective, including the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Value-Identity-Personal norm (VIP) model, which demonstrated rational decision-making factors and moral norm factors, respectively. We collected data from 912 farmers in the Jiangsu and Shaanxi provinces in China by means of a questionnaire survey and empirically tested the explanatory power of the models via partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings suggested that rational decision factors, including perceived behavioral control and attitudes, are better predictors of farmers' climate change coping behavior than moral norm factors, such as subjective norms. There remained a disconnect between the willingness to mitigate formed via perceived behavioral control and the actual behavior, and farmers who actually adopted mitigative climate-change behaviors still faced difficulties or had no control over the outcome. In addition, the effect of altruistic values on mitigating behavior (which predicts future benefits) was more pronounced. These findings pointed to rationality as the primary driver or motivation of pro-environmental behaviors in agricultural production, whereas the explanatory power of morality remained weak.