Introduction

In the United States agricultural sector, on-farm conservation presents opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapting to weather variability caused by climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that agriculture accounts for approximately 10% of the nation’s GHG emissions1. In addition to these GHG contributions, agriculture is, in turn, severely affected by climate change and is vulnerable to a variety of impacts, including increases in extreme precipitation, drought, pests, and overall growing levels of uncertainty2. The need for adaptation measures (e.g., adjusting practices to maintain resilience in the face of climate change impacts) and mitigation efforts (e.g., reducing N2O emissions) in agriculture calls on educators, outreach professionals, and communicators to continue developing innovative approaches to communicating about climate change. This study aims to increase understanding of farmers’ perceptions, attitudes, and concerns related to climate change by presenting a typology and exploring variation in these perspectives among Iowa farmers.

Amid increasing urgency around the need for climate change action—among institutions, organizations, and individuals alike—a broad area of research has centered on the efficacy, challenges, and outcomes of various communications strategies3,4,5. For many decades, climate change communications have been dominated by approaches that rely on the knowledge-deficit model. This model assumes that scientific and technical information about a problem will urge audiences to become more concerned and subsequently alter their behaviors6. The knowledge-deficit approach has generally been shown to be insufficient for encouraging action, leading some programs and efforts, in their climate change communications, to be more focused on audiences’ localities, sociocultural contexts, immediate concerns, and emotional connections5,7,8. As put by Nerlich et al., “Communication…has to use a mixture of modes and strategies, from verbal to visual, from the spoken word to the digital message4. Communicators can only be sure that their messages will be understood if they understand their audiences, their values, fears, hopes, and the situation of communication” (101).

Audience segmentation provides one potential avenue for adapting communications to incorporate these values, fears, and hopes. Audience segmentation is a process by which researchers and communicators may identify homogenous subgroups (i.e., types) within a larger heterogeneous audience group9. By identifying valid types or subgroups, communicators can, potentially, more efficiently develop scientific information and messaging in a way that connects with a target audience10,11.

Some efforts have been made to conduct audience segmentation of the U.S. population and other general populations with the intent of better understanding homogenous subgroups’ perspectives on climate change. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication developed the Six Americas of Global Warming, a typology of the U.S. population. The typology is based on 36 survey items that explore respondents’ beliefs, risk perceptions, technological optimism (i.e., confidence that ingenuity will address the harms of global warming), and support for policies, among other areas of concern. Through latent class analysis of 2,164 responses to a 36-item survey, Maibach et al. developed the Six Americas types—dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed—and generated a linear discriminant function for categorizing future respondents’ types9. This typology has been employed by researchers and practitioners for various other national and subnational populations12,13.

In an effort to reduce the complexity of the 36-item Six Americas survey instrument, Chryst et al. developed and validated a four-item proxy measure: the Six Americas Super Short Survey (SASSY)14. Based on an analysis that employed generalized boosted regression modeling to identify key items out of the 36-item questionnaire, they argued that the following four items are sufficient for categorizing respondents in the Six Americas, with a 70% prediction accuracy of the full-survey categories:

  • How important is the issue of global warming to you personally? (Response options: Not at all important, Not too important, Somewhat important, Very important, Extremely important)

  • How worried are you about global warming? (Response options: Not at all worried, Not very worried, Somewhat worried, Very worried)

  • How much do you think global warming will harm you personally? (Response options: Don’t know, Not at all, Only a little, A moderate amount, A great deal)

  • How much do you think global warming will harm future generations of people? (Response options: Don’t know, Not at all, Only a little, A moderate amount, A great deal)

By reducing the length of the Six Americas survey, the SASSY approach reduces survey-taker burden and maximizes resources for including additional survey items that may be of interest to researchers and practitioners.

This study explores SASSY segmentation among Iowa farmers. As far as we are aware, this study is the first documented application of SASSY with farmers. We aim to address the following questions.

  1. 1.

    What is the distribution of Iowa farmers among the Six Americas typology, using the four SASSY items relating to general attitudes and concerns about climate change?

  2. 2.

    Among Iowa farmers, do the Six Americas types vary in their attitudes related to climate change and its impacts on agriculture and farming?

The overall goal of the research is to apply the Six Americas typology to Iowa farmers and investigate potential variation in farmer perspectives specific to climate change and agriculture. We offer an alternative path to understanding farmer perspectives; this study demonstrates the utility of a four-item index for exploring complex and nuanced attitudes and beliefs about climate change and agricultural impacts. We identify future research directions for this approach, and this work ultimately aims to inform efforts to communicate about climate change and conservation approaches.

While other work has generated climate change typologies among farmers, they have generally employed relatively long survey instruments and utilize agriculture-specific items15,16,17. For instance, Arbuckle et al. conducted a latent class analysis using 34 survey items focused on the nexus of climate change and agriculture (e.g., extreme weather, perceived climate risks, hazards experienced), and identified six types that align closely with those of the Six Americas: the concerned, the uneasy, the uncertain, the unconcerned, the confident, and the detached15. While this typology and others have demonstrated utility in segmenting audiences and finding associations with other characteristics (e.g., demographics), the SASSY provides a distinct opportunity to apply a very short set of items to a specific population16. Also, given that the SASSY is used across a variety of publics, it can allow for direct comparisons of one study’s findings to the distributions of SASSY types in other populations; for instance, one may compare SASSY types among farmers to those among other, non-agricultural groups.

Results

To address our exploratory questions, we analyzed 1039 responses to the 2020 and 2021 Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll (IFRLP) to categorize farmers in the Six Americas types. We then examined how agriculture-specific attitudes related to climate change vary by type.

Global Warming’s Six Americas among Iowa Farmers

A primary goal of this analysis is to estimate the distribution of Iowa farmers within the Six Americas typology of global warming perspectives: dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed. Beliefs and perceptions about climate change are certainly not homogenous among farmers, and audience segmentation among Iowa farmers may prove useful for understanding how certain strata of Iowa farmers view climate change, its potential impacts, and actions for dealing with risk and vulnerability in agriculture17,18.

Based on their responses in 2021 to the four SASSY questions (Table 1) and using the segmentation web tool provided by YPCCC, we categorized each farmer as one of the Six Americas types19. Twenty-two percent were typed as dismissive, 20% were doubtful, and 7% were disengaged. Twenty-three percent were typed as cautious, 16% were concerned, and, finally, 12% were alarmed (Fig. 1).

Table 1 Percentages of IFRLP respondents who indicated their attitudes toward four global warming-related questions
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Fig. 1: The percentages of Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll respondents in 2021 (n = 1,039) who were typed within each Six Americas category.
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The 2020 National Estimate is based on survey data representing the general United States population, collected and published by YPCCC14.

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The items that are used to generate a type for each farmer focus on respondents’ perceptions of risk and the extent to which the issue is important to them14. There are some substantial differences between Iowa farmers’ proportions in these six types compared with the general national population based on a survey conducted by the YPCCC in late 202014. Among Iowa farmers, cautious individuals comprise the largest category, and dismissive individuals are a close second. By contrast, among the national population, the concerned and alarmed groups were the largest. Dismissive individuals were the second least prevalent nationally. These results suggest quite clearly that Iowa farmers, on average, are less concerned or worried about global warming and consider the issue to be of less importance than does the overall U.S. population.

In terms of their responses to individual items in the SASSY typology, farmers were categorized based on their differential patterns in global warming attitudes (Fig. 2). Dismissive respondents tended to place low personal importance on the issue and reported very low levels of concern or worry about future impacts, and doubtful respondents followed a similar pattern but with some more moderate responses, indicating some uncertainty or variation in attitudes depending upon the specific item to which they were responding. Disengaged respondents tended to show some level of worry or concern about the issue, but with high rates of “Don’t know” responses for the items about personal or future harm. Cautious respondents mostly reported moderate responses to all items, and concerned respondents reported a mix of moderate and high levels of import and concern. Finally, alarmed individuals almost exclusively reported moderately high or high levels of import and concern regarding global warming.

Fig. 2: Percentages of responses to each questionnaire item by SASSY type.
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Percentages are based on the proportion of respondents within each type. In all, 1,039 farmers answered all four SASSY questions.

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Beliefs and attitudes related to climate change

A second aim of this analysis is to understand Iowa farmers’ perceptions and attitudes towards the potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and farming, and to explore how these attitudes vary by SASSY type. The 2020 IFRLP included a set of statements related to climate change and agriculture and asked respondents to rate their levels of agreement with each statement on a five-point scale from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (5). Results are displayed in Fig. 3. We present these statements in four conceptual groups that we identified based on a factor analysis: perceived risks, techno-optimism, adaptation action and resources, and mitigation. In checking the post-hoc reliability of these grouped items, the Cronbach’s alpha values for these conceptual groups are 0.78, 0.40, 0.77, and 0.78, respectively; as such, there is high inter-item reliability for the perceived risks, adaptation, and mitigation factors. The techno-optimism items had high factor loadings but the scale shows low to moderate reliability.

Fig. 3
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Respondents’ reported levels of agreement with statements regarding perceived risks, techno-optimism, adaptation, and mitigation.

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Two statements measure the perceived risks of climate change. Perceived risks—such as levels of concern about the impacts of extreme weather, climate variability, and other impacts on one’s farming operation or broader community—have been associated in past research with farmers’ openness to action and policies regarding climate change and natural resources in the Midwest, though they are not always sufficient for individuals to take conservation actions20,21,22. Among our respondents, for the statement, “I am concerned about the potential impacts of climate change on my farm operation,” 5% strongly disagreed, 13% disagreed, 31% were uncertain, 42% agreed, and 8% strongly agreed. For the second statement, “I believe that extreme weather events will happen more frequently in the future,” 2% strongly disagreed, 6% disagreed, 41% were uncertain, 40% agreed, and 10% strongly agreed (Fig. 3).

Two statements corresponded generally to farmers’ techno-optimism for reducing the risks of climate change23. Techno-optimism is a set of beliefs in “human technological abilities to solve problems of unsustainability while minimizing or denying the need for large-scale social, economic and political transformation” (3)24. Five percent strongly disagreed and 23% disagreed that “whether climate change is occurring or not, I believe that crop insurance and other programs will protect my farm operation’s revenue.” Forty-two percent were uncertain, 27% agreed, and 4% strongly agreed. For the statement, “Climate change is not a big issue because human ingenuity will enable us to adapt to changes,” 10% strongly disagreed, 29% disagreed, 39% were uncertain, 18% agreed, and 3% strongly agreed.

Five statements were associated with farmers’ attitudes towards adaptation action and resources. Five percent of farmers disagreed or strongly disagreed that “Seed companies should be developing crop varieties adapted to coming changes in weather patterns.” Thirty-one percent were uncertain about this statement, 56% agreed, and 8% strongly agreed. For the statement, “I should take additional steps to protect the land I farm from increased precipitation”, 9% disagreed or strongly disagreed, 33% were uncertain, 51% agreed, and 7% strongly agreed. Two percent strongly disagreed and 6% disagreed that they “plan to use more conservation practices to increase my farm operation’s resilience to extreme weather,” while 42% were uncertain, 46% agreed, and 5% strongly agreed. Three and four percent strongly disagreed that extension and state agencies, respectively, “should do more to help farmers and landowners to prepare for increased precipitation.” Twelve and seventeen percent disagreed with these respective statements, 50% and 46% were uncertain, 31% and 30% agreed, and 4% and 3% strongly agreed (Fig. 3).

A final pair of statements corresponded to support for mitigation efforts. For the statement, “Government should do more to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and other potential causes of climate change,” 10% of farmers strongly disagreed, 18% disagreed, 34% were uncertain, 26% agreed, and 12% strongly agreed. For the second statement, “I should reduce greenhouse gas emissions from my farm operation,” 8% strongly disagreed, 21% disagreed, 45% were uncertain, 23% agreed, and 3% strongly agreed.

At the full sample level, these results provide some insights regarding Iowa farmers’ attitudes towards climate change and its potential impacts on agriculture and farming. First, half of all respondents expressed belief that extreme weather events will increase in frequency in the future, and half also expressed concern about climate change impacts on their farms. There were moderate levels of uncertainty and relatively low levels of disagreement associated with these ideas. Thus, beliefs and concern about climate change are relatively prominent among Iowa farmers.

Second, most farmers appear to prefer private sector or individual-level approaches to adaptation to extreme weather and increased precipitation. The statements associated with these ideas—either centering on seed technology or farmer-initiated approaches—received the lowest levels of disagreement and low to moderate uncertainty. On the other hand, fewer farmers agreed that university extension and state agencies should be more involved in on-farm adaptation; of the adaptation-related statement set, these two statements were associated with the highest levels of both disagreement and uncertainty.

Third, respondents offered low levels of support for mitigation action. Statements regarding government or farmers reducing greenhouse gas emissions had high levels of disagreement and moderate to high levels of uncertainty; agreement was relatively low.

Using the six Americas to stratify Iowa farmers’ agriculture-climate attitudes

While the SASSY was developed primarily to generate audience segments around general attitudes related to global warming, this study explores whether the SASSY types are also indicative of attitudes specific to agriculture. In other words, do attitudes and perceptions about the impacts of climate change on agriculture vary by SASSY type? To address this question, we compared responses to the 2020 IFRLP survey items related to climate change and agriculture by type.

The six types—dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed—differed from each other in their attitudes regarding climate change impacts and agriculture. The percentages of responses by type are displayed in Tables 2 and 3, with the agriculture-climate statements grouped into the conceptual sets developed for Fig. 3 (perceived risks, techno-optimism, adaptation action and resources, and mitigation).

Table 2 Percentages of farmers, within each Six Americas type, who indicated levels of agreement with various statements regarding climate change risk perceptions and techno-optimism
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Table 3 Percentages of farmers, within each Six Americas type, who indicated levels of agreement with various statements regarding adaptation to and mitigation of climate change
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Generally, dismissive farmers were more likely to express uncertainty or disagreement about climate change and its potential impacts on agriculture. On the other hand, farmers who were categorized as alarmed were very likely to express agreement about these topics. The four intermediate types fill in this spectrum of climate change attitudes, with higher levels of disagreement and uncertainty among those who were doubtful and disengaged and higher levels of agreement among those who were cautious and concerned. For instance, related to perceived risks, about 85% of dismissive farmers either disagreed or expressed uncertainty with the statement “extreme weather events will happen more frequently in the future,” whereas 95% of the alarmed agreed or strongly agreed (Table 2). Similarly, 82% of dismissive farmers disagreed or were uncertain that “I am concerned about the potential impacts of climate change on my farm operation,” while 93% of alarmed farmers reported agreement with this statement.

The statements related to techno-optimism followed a similar gradient, but with an inverse association (Table 2). Eighty-eight percent of dismissive farmers and 81% of doubtful farmers agreed with or were uncertain that “Climate change is not a big issue because human ingenuity will enable us to adapt to changes,” while 94% of the concerned and 97% of the alarmed were uncertain, disagreed, or strongly disagreed, respectively. Attitudes measured through the statement, “Whether climate change is occurring or not, I believe that crop insurance and other programs will protect my farm operation’s revenue,” varied to some extent by type, but generally reflected high levels of uncertainty among all SASSY types.

Responses about statements pertaining to adaptation action and resources followed strong gradational patterns like those seen for the perceived risks items. For these adaptation items, there were high levels of uncertainty among dismissive and doubtful farmers and very high levels of agreement among concerned and alarmed farmers (Table 3). For instance, 64% of dismissive farmers were uncertain or disagreed with the statement, “I should take additional steps to protect the land I farm from increased precipitation,” while seventy-six percent of alarmed farmers agreed or strongly agreed that they should take additional steps.

Finally, the mitigation statements also reflected the gradation seen in statements related to perceived risks and adaptation (Table 3). There was relatively extreme differentiation in farmers’ attitudes to the statement, “Government should do more to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and other potential causes of climate change;” 92% of the dismissive and 85% of the doubtful disagreed or were uncertain, while 73% of the concerned and 90% of the alarmed agreed. A similar pattern emerged for the statement, “I should reduce greenhouse gas emissions from my farm operation,” although fewer respondents in all types placed the onus on themselves than on the government to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Discussion

These descriptive findings provide some insights into the use of the Six Americas audience segmentation among farmers and the associated differential beliefs and attitudes about agriculture-climate intersections. Iowa farmers who were categorized as dismissive or doubtful about global warming in terms of general worry and concern were likely to be uncertain about or in disagreement with measures to address climate change impacts on their farms. Farmers who are concerned or alarmed were very likely to be supportive of some adaptation measures and greenhouse gas mitigation.

Audience segmentation can be an effective tactic for developing education and extension programs in the agricultural community. Still, it is important to consider that there is variation in farmers’ attitudes and beliefs about climate change, even within each of the Six Americas categories. While the SASSY was developed primarily to generate audience segments around general attitudes related to global warming, this study explores whether the SASSY types were also associated with variation in attitudes specific to agriculture. In other words, do attitudes and perceptions about the impacts of climate change on agriculture vary by SASSY type?

The six types—dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed—differed markedly from each other in their attitudes regarding climate change impacts and agriculture, as illustrated by the gradational effects displayed in Tables 2 and 3. These effects appear strongest within the cautious, concerned, and alarmed groups (i.e., attitudinal responses “huddle” more closely within each type), suggesting that audience segmentation may be most feasible for efforts to reach farmers who are already concerned about climate change. The disengaged farmers also show lower variation in their attitudinal responses, presenting an opportunity for targeted communications to address the high levels of uncertainty expressed by these farmers.

The dismissive and doubtful groups show more variation in their attitudinal responses, which may present more challenges in developing tailored communications for farmers who worry less about climate change. As with the disengaged group, messaging and education that target high levels of uncertainty may find some success in communicating to farmers about climate change and encouraging adaptation and mitigation behaviors18. Similarly, communications efforts that focus on other values, such as productivity, soil health, or non-climatic natural resource issues, may have traction with these groups.

Our results speak to the substantial heterogeneity among farmers; substantial portions of Iowa farmers display resistance to adaptive and mitigative strategies that can address the climate change crisis, and other portions show receptiveness or are already taking action. Audience segmentation efforts and climate change communications should aim to provide support to the receptive and action-oriented farmers, while complementary efforts should be developed strategically and innovatively to reach the more resistant audiences.

There are several directions that we feel this line of inquiry should take in future research. First, an important next step will be the identification of proxy measures that are externally observable (e.g., farm size, farmer age, dominant crops, geographic location) and are associated with the Six Americas types. By understanding key observable traits associated with the audience segments, outreach professionals may be more equipped to tailor education and messaging for subgroups of farmers. Second, change in farmers’ climate change attitudes over time is of great interest given the temporally fluctuating communications and political messaging surrounding these issues. This study has presented a cross-section of Iowa farmers’ attitudes towards climate change (albeit using data across two years), and these attributes are likely to change over time. Finally, we recommend that future research should take advantage of the standard index that the SASSY offers and compare the distribution of farmers’ SASSY types to other populations. For example, comparisons to other farming populations or to entirely different professions and community types may highlight the diverse climate change perspectives throughout the U.S.

Methods

This analysis utilizes data from the 2020 and 2021 waves of the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll (IFRLP). The IFRLP is a panel survey that is mailed to farmers across Iowa each year; the poll has been conducted every year except 2019 since 1982. In recent years, the sample selection and distribution of the survey has been conducted by the Iowa State University Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology. In February 2020, the survey was sent to 1,339 farmers. It was completed by 1,059 participants, resulting in a response rate of 80%. In February 2021, it was sent to 1,781 farmers; 1,095 completed it, for a response rate of 62%. Of these respondents in 2020 and 2021, 832 farmers responded to the survey in both years. This sample of 832 farmers who were in the two-year panel was analyzed to evaluate potential differences in attitudes toward climate change adaptation and mitigation between Six Americas types.

It is important to note that as a panel survey, the IFRLP is subject to attrition, which can be due to multiple factors over time25. Common reasons for IFRLP survey attrition, provided through personal communication by survey participants or their family members, have included retirement, death, lack of interest, and privacy concerns. To maintain sample size, the IFRLP adds a new random sample each year, which is purchased from DTN, a reputable source of samples of farmers26. Over time, this process has resulted in a sample that differs from the overall population of Iowa farmers in some aspects. First, the panel survey structure means that participants age in the panel and as a result are older on average than the farmer population (Table 4). Second, because the survey questions tend to focus on commercial production agriculture, smaller-scale hobby farmers with little or no annual production tend to drop out as many survey items are not relevant to them. As a result, average farm size of IFRLP farmers is larger than the average reported in the Census of Agriculture. For example, the average 2017 IFRLP farm size in acres was 432 acres, compared to the Iowa mean of 355 acres in the 2017 Census of Agriculture27. However, because larger-scale operations farm a disproportionately high percentage of Iowa farmland, for the purposes of this study we view this bias toward larger farms as favorable27. Other demographics information—gender, political alignment, and education—are presented in Table 5.

Table 4 Mean age and farmland acres of respondents, with standard deviation and number of respondents (N)
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Table 5 Frequencies and proportions of respondents’ demographics, including self-reported gender, political identity, and education level
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We included the four SASSY survey questions in the 2021 wave of the IFRLP. To assign each respondent into one of the six climate change types—dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed—we utilized the segmentation web tool provided by YPCCC (Table 1)19. As described by Chryst et al., this tool takes in the respondents’ four SASSY responses and processes them in a linear regression model that outputs each respondents’ type. This approach lends consistency and the ability to compare with other populations described by YPCCC.