Determinants of the adoption of climate-smart cocoa practices in cocoa-producing regions: a systematic review

Climate change increasingly threatens global cocoa production, prompting the promotion of climate-smart cocoa (CSC) practices to strengthen resilience, productivity, and mitigation outcomes. Adoption, however, remains uneven and is shaped by interacting socioeconomic, institutional, and environmental factors. This systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence on the determinants of CSC adoption, identifying barriers, enablers, and persistent research gaps. A PRISMA-guided search of CAB Abstracts and Web of Science (2000–2024) screened 830 records and retained 60 peer-reviewed studies. Methodological reporting in each study was assessed for transparency in research questions, sampling, and analysis as part of the eligibility review, although a formal risk-of-bias instrument was not applied. The included evidence is concentrated in West Africa, particularly Ghana (67% of studies), with limited representation from Latin America, Asia, and Francophone West Africa. Across studies, financial constraints, weak and uneven extension services, insecure land tenure, and limited access to climate information emerge as the dominant barriers, while farmer cooperatives, peer learning, and other social networks function as important but under-examined facilitators of diffusion. Practice mixes vary by context, with agroforestry most prominent in some settings and good agricultural practices, climate-specific adaptations, and certification-driven approaches in others. Gaps remain in longitudinal evidence, gender-disaggregated analysis, youth engagement, and the systematic study of network-based diffusion. The review concludes that accelerating CSC adoption requires context-specific, theoretically grounded interventions that strengthen institutional support, expand financial instruments, and explicitly incorporate cooperative and network-based learning.