Climate information services shape the adoption of climate smart agriculture practices among smallholder maize farmers in Ghana

Climate Information Services (CIS) are widely promoted as a key strategy for strengthening climate adaptation and accelerating the adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) among smallholder farmers. However, evidence on how different dimensions of CIS, including awareness, access, and intensity of use, influence CSA adoption remains limited. This study examines the relationship between CIS and CSA adoption among 550 smallholder maize farmers in Ghana’s Ashanti Region. Using Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) to estimate adoption under exposure and Generalized Propensity Score Matching (GPSM) to evaluate the effects of CIS use intensity, we distinguish between the effects of access to climate information and the intensity with which farmers engage with multiple information sources. The results show that universal exposure to CIS and CSA could substantially increase adoption rates, indicating considerable unmet potential for climate adaptation. Institutional factors, including farmer training, credit access, farmer organizations, and knowledge, significantly increase both CIS use and CSA adoption. However, greater CIS use intensity is weakly associated with lower CSA adoption intensity (β = −0.425, p = 0.091), suggesting that expanding the number of information channels alone may not translate into greater technology uptake. This relationship may reflect information quality limitations, conflicting advisories, institutional constraints, or increasing information demands relative to farmers’ capacity to act, although these mechanisms were not directly measured. The findings highlight the importance of complementing climate information with effective extension services, financial inclusion, and institutional support to strengthen climate adaptation and promote sustainable agricultural development among smallholder farmers.