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Access to useful climate information is critical for adaptation needs of African smallholder farmers, yet empirical studies documenting the socioeconomic, environmental and household predictors of access to and willingness to pay for climate information services from a gendered perspective have been limited to date. This paper addresses this research need by identifying the predictors of access to and willingness to pay for climate information by smallholder farmers in north-eastern Ghana, a “vulnerability hotspot” where slight changes in rainfall often result in considerable yield losses. The study uses data collected from 193 household surveys in 2 communities across 2 districts in the Upper East region of Ghana. The logit regression was performed based on a disaggregated procedure. Our findings suggest that the majority of smallholder farmers were not willing to pay for the cost of receiving climate information. Results show that only 50% (n = 121) of the male farmers compared with just 31% (n = 72) of female farmers were willing to pay for climate information. The results from the marginal analysis suggest that access to climate information is influenced by both household and environmental factors. The marginal effects logistic regression shows statistically significant differences in the predictors of access and willingness to pay for climate information based on gender. Findings highlight that the provision of climate information should be designed and tailored to meet the needs of smallholder farmers with different socioeconomic backgrounds to enable farmers manage climate risks and build adaptive capacity. The Ghana Meteorological Agency needs to be supported through capacity building on communication to provide targeted climate information for farmers in this climate “vulnerability hotspot”.
Antwi‐Agyei et al. (Fri,) studied this question.