Examining Farmers’ Behavioral Drivers to Adopt Floating Farming: A Study in the Wetlands of Southwestern Coastal Bangladesh

The frequent climatic extreme events in Bangladesh’s coastal region significantly affected the local agricultural system. To meet the growing food demand, coastal regions must adopt climate-smart agricultural practices to sustain food production. This study examines the farmers’ behavioral determinants for adopting climate-smart agricultural practices based on floating farming. Using a structured questionnaire, we surveyed 341 farm households in climate change-affected wetland areas of southern coastal Bangladesh. We used an Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model by analyzing data to estimate the effect of adopting floating farming as an adaptation strategy on farm households’ profitability. Our findings suggest that 79% of sampled farm households used floating farming to adapt to extreme climatic events like waterlogging, hazard effects, and erratic rainfall. Results exhibit that age, education, religion, cultivation season, hazard effects, training, previous knowledge of floating farming, and technical support were the determinants of adopting floating farming. Adopting farm households had a 60% higher farm profit than non-adopters, and cooperative membership, technical, credit, and training positively affected farm profits. Estimates from the ESR model show that the adoption of floating farming resulted in higher profitability when compared with the counterfactual situation. Analysis reveals that adopters of floating farming experienced a significant gain of US$ 22.66/decimal as farm profit compared to the control mean (US$ 37.69/decimal). In contrast, non-adopters would have gained US$ 1.28/decimal if they had adopted floating farming, indicating the missed opportunity for enhanced profitability. These findings highlight the potential of floating farming as an effective climate-smart adaptation strategy in wetland areas, emphasizing the need for targeted policies and support mechanisms to promote its wider adoption and enhance farmers' resilience to climate change impacts.