attendees believed climate change being caused by the gods and ancestors being upset (63% compared to 31%), by farming practices within the community (32% compared to 11%), or by the naturalness of the changes (32% compared to 22%). Indeed, the _one_ respondent who identified climate change as definitely resulting from pollution from outside the community had not attended either of the workshops. Of the workshop attendees, 47% thought that climate changes would continue, while 44% of non-attendees thought it would continue, an insignificant difference<sup>(</sup><sup>_2_</sup> _[2]_ = 0.49, _p_ = 0.782).

The household survey results are relevant for this paper for two reasons. First, they suggest that there likely are important differences in how farmers and policy-makers perceive the causes of climate change, which in turn could influence the perception of future risk, and of the effectiveness of adaptation strategies. Second, it suggests that a strategy to “fix” these perceptions by providing accurate information will not necessarily be immediately effective. It has long been observed that where any ambiguity makes it possible, people use new information to confirm, rather that disprove, their pre-existing beliefs (Lord et al., 1979), a pattern known as “confirmation bias.” The farmers who had participated in the workshops did not assimilate the workshop content—which included the information that pollution from outside the community was causing climate change—in such a way as to be increasingly skeptical of alternative explanations, but rather, apparently, to believe in their pre-existing beliefs more strongly.

# **4 Discussion**

Both the qualitative results from the workshops and the quantitative results from the questionnaire and household survey suggest that there are differences in perception between farmers and policy makers, of a type that could lead to policy failure such as that observed in Mozambique following the 2000 floods. The workshops suggest that farmers and policy makers differ in their desire to take action, versus staying with the status quo, related to how each group views the potential for negative consequences flowing from action. The questionnaire results suggest that there are differences in the perception of relative likelihoods. Farmers view climate related events as being less likely than the non-climate related events on the questionnaire, and while the climate-related events have become more frequent in recent years, they do not expect them to be more frequent in the future. Policy makers, by contrast, view the climate-related events as more likely, with that likelihood increasing in the present and continuing into the future. The survey results suggest that simply providing them information about climate change and climate risks will not easily change these farmers’ perceptions. Rather, the perceptions grow out of lifetimes of experience.

These results lend additional empirical support to the proposition that Model B in Figure 1 is in fact the more accurate representation of the adaptation and coping process. They also suggest that real problems in implementation can arise when adequate communication is absent at the risk analysis and policy design stages, because of the potential for major differences in perception of risk. We have identified a number of behavioral reasons why such differences in perception may exist.

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