Diverse experiences, diverse adaptations: A multidimensional look at climate change responses

Human behavioral adaptation to climate change has gained increasing attention from multiple disciplines; behavioral literature, for instance, has studied people's responses to climate change when physically experiencing a specific climate event. Our research builds on that literature and incorporates a multidimensional approach to experiences and adaptation: rather than studying one physical manifestation and a particular response, we test whether different climate events relate to different forms of adaptation. Based on a national environmental survey, we employ Bayesian regression modeling to comprehend whether adaptation actions (changes in clothing, diet, occupation, house infrastructure, and water and energy consumption) relate to various reported experiences (droughts, floods, rains, heatwaves, forest fires, problems in food supply, biodiversity loss, and rise in sea level). Our results highlight the heterogeneous nature of behavioral responses to perceived climate change events: not all climate change manifestations relate to adaptation actions, thereby providing a multidimensional view of the action-experience relation.