Influence Factors and Assessment of Risk Perception for Agricultural Drought Based on Household-scale

Xiaofang SHI, Min TIAN, Jianlan LI

College of Resource Environment and Earth Science, Yunnan Institute of Geography, Yunnan University, Kunming 650091, China

In recent years,the loss caused by drought has become more and more serious. Agricultural drought will lead to unsustainable development of agriculture or weaken the ability of sustainable development. However,agriculture is the basis of human survival and development, and the sustainable development of agriculture is the basis for the sustainable development of human society economy. Without the sustainable development of agriculture, it is impossible to have the sustainable development of human society economy.Therefore,“agricultural disaster prevention and reduction” has become the critical problem that cannot be avoided for the development of agriculture. When drought happens,farmers are the victims who are directly hit and most vulnerable to the damage of agricultural drought, and they are also the most fundamental and effective elements in the governmental and so cial assistance work as well as in the self-help and mutual help work after the disaster. Whether the farmers are positivity or negativity in disaster reduction depends on the judgment on the risk perception of drought,and therefore,a correct understanding of drought is fundamental to reduce the loss caused by drought.

Agricultural drought is a gradually generated hazard, and in addition to natural conditions, social economy and human activities are also important influence factors to agricultural drought. Therefore, there exists large uncertainty and many influencing factors in agricultural drought risk. As for the government sectors, insurance company as well as the farmers,to improve the ability of agricultural drought risk perception is the important basis for scientific decision-making, and the judgment of drought risk perception could greatly influence the willingness and the efficiency of farmers to reduce the disaster. Agriculture suffers the most from drought, and farmers are the workers in agricultural production,and thus, the long-term living geographical conditions of farmers make them the basic research objects who are suffering from drought, and who are the most impressive to the drought risk perception. Currently, there are many researchers carrying out thor-ough study on the analysis, evaluation and indicator selection of drought risk,but, it is still in the primary stage as to the analysis on the drought risk perception from the perspective of farmers. Therefore, in this paper we describe the basic connotation of risk perception,the influence factors of the risk perception for agricultural drought as well as the mainstream assessment model.Additionally,we summarize the latest developments of research methods for risk perception for the agricultural drought, and the research status of the risk perception for agricultural drought,and set forth the trends of risk perception for the agricultural drought.Moreover, we propose the research areas of the risk perception for agricultural drought should be improved in future with the aim to provide foundation for the drought risk perception analysis.

Connotation of Risk Perception of Agricultural Drought Disaster

Concept of drought risk perception

Natural hazard studies in China believe that disaster risk refers to disaster activities as well as the possibility of them to damage human life and property[1], and it complies with the probability distribution in statistical law,making it also known as probability risk. Risk perception is a kind of attitude and intuitive judgment to express the objective risk, which includes the evaluation and reaction of risk. Agricultural drought risk perception is a kind of decision-making behavior, in which farmers needs to produce because of the needs of decision,and also serve the decision, who need to make suitable decisions based on the analysis on the probable drought risk,which highlights the subjectivity of risk perception. LI believes that drought risk perception is the subjective judgment of people on the features and severity of drought risk,and it is an important indicator to measure the public psychological sickness[2].MENG thinks that risk perception belongs to the category of psychology, and drought risk perception is the feelings and cognition of individuals to the objective risks in agricultural production caused by drought, which highlights that the influences of the intuitive judgment and subjective felling of individuals on cognition[3].

A basic perceptual processes can be abstracted to three parts of sensory perception, cognitive processing,thinking and application, namely, the individual makes the decision of subjective risk based on intuitive judgment and the experience from subjective feeling,as well as the drought environment stimulus, information record,screening and memory, which is the basis for the individual to make the judgment of the attitudes including escape, change, accept the risk as well as the behavior decision[4]. Therefore,the drought risk perception ability of farmers has a more practical effect on improving the ability of villagers to cope with the drought, and reduce the loss caused by drought.

Influence factors of risk perception

There are many factors influencing risk perception, mainly including the individual factor, psychological contract, event factor, risk controllable degree, knowledge structure, risk nature, social factor and so on[5]. In the analysis on the influence factors of risk perception of specific disaster risks,individual factor, event factor, knowledge structure and social factor are usually the major influence factors.

Individual factor The differences in individual features and cognitive conditions influence the risk perception of individuals[5].

Event factor Event feature is the source of causing individual risk fear.Generally speaking,the fear of human to risk event is closely related to the risk features of the risk event itself.Event features can often be attributed to the following factors: incident causes,influence scope, whether the loss is clear, whether the event is predictable,whether the event is unknown or familiar, which are the fog-level of event. Slovic, et al. studied the risk perception through the psychometric paradigm, believing that risk perception was measurable and predictable,and in the meantime, they also revealed the three basic dimensions of the public to risk perception: the dimension of fearing risk, the dimension of unknown risk and the number of individuals facing certain specific risk[6].Based on the research results of Slovic, SUN established the two-dimension factor space model of the risk perception of individuals by combining the first and the third dimension together with the second dimension,and pointed out that the position of the crisis event in the space determined the perception degree of individuals to the risk.

(4)Social factor.The influences of social factors on the risk perception of individuals mainly come from the media and government.As for the media,as the information filter, its influence on the risk perception of individuals mainly in the amplification of risk events; as for the government, if the individual who is in the crisis could believe that the government would help him and protect him, and then, the sense of fear and worry would decrease, but on the other hand, if people do not trust the government, then the sense of helplessness would increase, enlarging the fear. HUANG pointed out the dual-character of media and risk, that is, if the media take on the main responsibility of visualizing risk,revealing risk and confronting risk,but in the meantime, media could amplify the risk and present the risk irrationally, which could result in the occurrence of risk. Therefore, she pointed out that the thinking model of the media should achieve the transformation from reporting the disaster to broadcasting the risk[8]. XIE et al.thought that trust was the most important indicator influencing the effectiveness of risk communication, and during the period of SARS,the basic trust of the public to the government and expert was the basis to the formation of receiver-centered risk communication model[9].

There are many factors affecting agricultural drought risk perception,and we have summarized the “per-ception-behavior decision” model based on the existed research (Fig.1).In the model,we summarized some of the main influence factors in risk perception.

Assessment Mode

In view of the collected data about risk perception, different researchers have different assessment models to carry out the assessment. YU et al.conducted simple statistical analysis mainly from the cognition situation of residents to current drought disaster,the attitude of residents towards drought as well as the disaster reduction behaviors[10]. LI et al. carried out the statistical analysis from the 3 aspects of the current cognition level of the public to drought risk, cognition difference, preference of drought risk information acquisition route to evaluate the risk perception degree of the public[11].CHAI et al.used multiple regression models to assess the influence factors of tourists’ risk perception, which constructed assessment model from the background characters of the interviewees and the main influence factors. Renato Miceli et al.mainly adopted the Logistic assessment model to carry out the evaluation on the villagers’ risk perception of flood from the psychological dimension[12].As for the study on the disaster risk assessment model, a majority of researchers from home and abroad take multiple regression model[13], logistic analysis model, simple statistical analysis mode, and so on. Therefore,it is concluded that in terms of agricultural drought, the assessment of farmers’ risk perception mainly involves with the influence factors of risk perception, but not combine with the household disaster of farmers to carry out comprehensive evaluation. The influence factors of farmers’ risk perception mainly involve with individual factor, event factor, knowledge structure and social factor, and its assessment has large range of application,which cannot clearly evaluate the disaster degree of the household.However,the assessment of household disaster degree is not only in favor of the analysis on the household disaster of different regions, but also could comprehensively analyze the drought risk perception ability of farmers by combining the farmer’s drought risk perception degree, which could form the interrelation feedback mechanism between nature and humanity within the micro-region agricultural drought system.

We have summarized the farmer’s drought risk assessment model based on the previous study, which is as shown in Fig.2.

Assessment on household disaster degree

Peasant household disaster damage assessment: drought damage assessment mainly include extreme risk model, probable risk model and possible risk model, and drought risk assessment could be divided into drought damage assessment and drought probability assessment.Drought damage assessment mainly assesses the grain loss rate caused by drought[14].

Where, L is the percentage of grain loss amount caused by drought to the grain output in normal years in this region;LDis the possible grain loss amount caused by drought in the current year, which could reflect the drought severity of the year; OGis the grain output in normal years.

To eliminate the differences in varieties of different crops and different drought resistance in growth stages, we estimate the grain loss amount caused by drought based on the final harvest yield (actual yield)by using average output reduction shared method[15].

Where,S is the grain loss amount caused by drought (kg);A1,A2,A3are drought area, disaster area and failure area of the crops (hm2);C is the grain yield in normal years, which is determined by the trend of the grain yield per unit area.

带教老师必须热爱临床教学工作，具有为人师表的品质，甘为人梯、无私奉献。能以身作则，具有良好的医德医风，遵纪守法，为人正派；爱岗敬业，热爱本职工作，工作作风谦逊、严谨；并具有良好的团队合作精神。具有本科及以上学历、高年资主治医师以上的专业资质，具备较扎实、全面的儿童保健基础知识。具备一定的临床科研能力，具有将临床问题与科研相联系的敏锐洞察力。

In addition, the degree of household disaster damage is classified according to the Table 1.

Table 1 Standard for the division of household disaster damage[24]

Assessment on farmers’ drought risk perception

At present, the research method of agricultural drought risk perception mainly include 2 aspects of psychometric paradigm and cultural theory:first, psychometric paradigm. ZHOU et al. put forward the most popular risk cognition research method at present[16], which included sorting, correlation analysis, factor analysis of the measured results. This method uses psychological scale and multivariate analysis techniques and shows people’s attitude and consciousness of the risk in quantitative way with the aim to reveal the factors determining risk perception, but it pays little attention to the regional culture, social background and other influence factors; second, cultural theory, which was pioneered by Douglas and Wildavsky. In risk perception research field, the society, culture, belief and other factors elucidated by the cultural theory would make the hypothesis affected the public risk perception be-come more and more important[17],and many researchers begin to take the social and cultural background of the public into consideration when analyzing the public risk perception. Risk perception could not break away from the people depended social structure.Without an understanding of the value and belief of the social culture,it is difficult to know the risk cognition of the public. However, cultural theory could only explain a relative small part of people’s risk cognition variation information,and there is relative few related empirical study in China.

Drought risk perception assessment method

Based on the previous study, we summarize the drought risk perception assessment methods into the following 2 aspects.

Statistical analysis Using project analysis method, this method utilizes SPSS statistical software to conduct descriptive statistics analysis on data,reliability analysis on risk perception scale, and validity analysis on variables. And then, it would carry out independent T test and logistic analysis,and use AMOS7.0 software to conduct structural equation model analysis on the data to discuss the relationship between the risk perception of farmers and household disaster degree in agricultural drought. And the specific analysis process is shown as follows:firstly,project analysis method is used to screen the recovered risk perception data and reject the invalid variables. Secondly, reliability analysis is to analyze the structure of the remained measured variables, including reliability analysis and validity analysis.Reliability refers to the degree of reliability of the investigation, which is an indicator to measure the consistence.The a coefficient created by Cronbach is a commonly used data analysis method to analyze the inner consistence. Thirdly, validity analysis. Validity refers to the degree of closeness of the real measured results and the attempted measure object. The factor analysis in construct validity is used to verify the validity of all variables.Fourthly, SEM structural equation model is used to analyze the quantitative correlation between farmers’drought risk perception and family disaster degree. SEM rarely deals with the estimation of one model, and Byrne believed that in a certain study,in addition to a basic model,it may also have a number of alternative models, which could determine the model that is best reflect the real situation through the comparison among models[18].

GIS spatial analysis method It conducts the spatial analysis from 2 aspects of the above research (household disaster, comprehensive assessment of farmers’ drought risk perception ability in the village) to the spatial type of the phenomenon to reveal interrelation feedback mechanism between nature and humanity within the micro-region agricultural drought system.

Current Status of Agricultural Drought Risk Perception

At present, researchers at home and abroad have conducted a large amount of researches and exploration to agricultural drought risk, and the analysis and evaluation on the existed research result can do great good to the further development of the agricultural drought risk regulation research in China. It is not hard to find that the drought risk perception as well as crisis reaction and behavior reaction of regional population is still far from enough. It mainly shows in the following aspects. Firstly, among the agricultural drought risk assessment model, most of them focus on the assessment on regional agricultural drought overall risk, but few researchers assess the household disaster from farmer scale. Farmers are the primary study object who suffers from the drought, and they have the most impressive risk perception to drought. With no attention on household disaster, it is hard to provide the most basic technical support from the drought risk regulation. Secondly, it is still a difficult point which has not been solved as to the quantization of the used crowd drought risk perception(psychological factors), as well as crisis reaction behavior.For example,the risk assessment rate used in the psychometric paradigm statistical analysis is the averaged rate of the measured sample, which cannot make analysis and explanation to different individual risk cognition difference.Cultural theory study could only explain a small part of people’s risk perception,but cannot show the farmers’ household drought risk perception situation.Thirdly,studies on the crisis reaction and preparedness behavior of disaster prevention attach great importance to the emergency management of sudden disasters such as flood and earthquake; and as for the main bodies ofdisaster reduction, it emphasizes the aid from the country and social organization[19], but ignore the role of individuals;personal role;it pays much attention to regional risk assessment,but overlook farmers’ risk perception.In addition, relatively fewer achievements have been made in this field in China, and the research areas are mainly the arid and semi-arid regions in China, which is lack of the cross culture.

Trends of Risk Perception for Agricultural Drought

According to the current risk perception influence factors as well as the development history of assessment,the influence factors and assessment of risk perception based on farmers scale agricultural drought would get the substantial development from the following aspects:

Extension of rural household

With the rapid development of the psychological measurement paradigm,the research on the risk perception of agricultural drought will be repeated and spread to the new type of farmer household.Early research is limited by various factors, and the farmers are generally limited to the heads of families, literate farmers, villages with convenient transportation, making the samples far from complete. Further study will conduct sampling survey on the most typical farmers in larger region. With the expansion of samples,further research could be able to show the risk perception conditions of different groups of people, providing possibility for the comparison study on drought risk reception among different groups of people.In the meantime,the study on different groups of people within larger region will also lay foundation for the formulation of more efficient risk communication polity.

Cross-culture study

At present, there are large amount of studies on public disaster risk perception in Europe and the USA, while there are relatively fewer studies focused on household drought risk perception in Asia, especially in China[17].With the study on risk perception going deep and the society becoming more and more concerned with the global drought problems, the cross-culture study on drought risk perception has become a new study highlight in this area[20-22]. Concerning the sustainable development of human, the cross-culture research on drought risk will compare the differences in agricultural drought risk perception among the farmers from different political,economical and cultural system,and try to provide constructive suggestions to solve the bottle-necks in the management of agricultural drought risk among different countries,and therefore, it is of great practical significance.

Development of research areas

The current study on drought risk perception mainly limits to the farmers’ understanding of the occurrence frequency, time, degree of severity and range and influence of drought[23],which almost contain nothing with the assessment of household disaster situation. Thus, the study results have little guiding significance to the practical risk management among village households. With the study becoming deeper and deeper,the study areas of agricultural drought risk perception will focus more on detailed household perspective. Assessment on household disaster situation will make the study on agricultural drought risk perception be of more practical guiding significance to the formulation of risk management polity. Meanwhile, with the society becoming more and more concerned with agricultural drought risk, new drought risk entries will be included in the study on drought risk perception.

Improvement of assessment model

Currently,there exist obvious limitation among the various agricultural drought risk assessment model, which makes it impossible to completely understand the agricultural disaster situations through the farmers’drought risk perception system, making it hard to provide the most fundamental technical support for drought risk management. Therefore, the study on agricultural drought risk perception must take the smallest unit of peasant household into consideration to analyze the household disaster situation, risk perception, and form the interrelation feedback mechanism between nature and humanity within the micro-region agricultural drought system to build a more effective agricultural drought risk management model.

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