| Attributes of organisational adaptive capacity
| Berkhout et al. (2006) address the question of how organisations adapt to climate change already occurring and projected. Based on models of organisational learning they conduct interviews and focus groups with 9 companies in the housing and water sectors in the UK aimed at how, or whether, they have reacted to climate impacts or climate information. They find adaptations to climate change, are similar in some ways to adaptations to regulatory or technological changes, however due to longer timescales of feedback to decisions related to adaptation there are differences. Business have difficulties in taking adaptive action due to the weakness in signals of climate change, and the uncertainty in regard to benefits of acting.
| Berkhout, F., Hertin, J. and Gann, D. M., 2006: Learning to Adapt: Organisational Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts, Climatic Change, 78 (1), 135-156. [doi:10.1007/s10584-006-9089-3]
|
| Protection Motivation Theory
| Grothmann and Patt (2005) address the question of what motivates actors to take adaptation actions in two cases of local level resources users. They investigate the role of climate information in adaptation decision-making in cases studies in Germany and Zimbabwe through interviews, focus groups with a group of farmers with access to climate forecast information. These observations aimed at eliciting the role of seasonal climate forecast information in crop planting decisions of farmers. It was found that an actor's perceived ability to act effectively in the face of a risk or threat as an important determinant of the action taken.
| Grothmann, T. and Patt, A., 2005: Adaptive capacity and human cognition: the process of individual adaptation to climate change, Global Environmental Change Part A, 15 (3), 199-213.
|
