Agricultural Insurance Adoption in the Context of Climate Change: Influencing Factors in Benin (West Africa)

Background: Agricultural insurance has emerged as an effective climate risk management strategy in many African countries, but its adoption is still low in Benin. This study seeks to understand farmers¢access and perception of agricultural insurance, while analyzing the factors that affect its adoption in the municipality of Ouèssè in Benin. Methods: Using the method of snowball sampling, the research team collected data from 112 household heads, from six major maize-producing villages. With the data from focus group discussions and a structured questionnaire, we performed descriptive statistics and used the logistic regression model to analyze the factors influencing farmers' agricultural insurance adoption. Result: Our investigations revealed that almost all (95%) of the respondents have received agricultural insurance information at least once and about 94% of them found insurance useful for effective agricultural risk management. However, most of respondents (66.5%) lacked knowledge of loss assessment methods and 52% of them said that the insurance premium was too high for farmers. Most (95%) of the respondents who subscribed to agricultural insurance also received agricultural credit. The binomial logistic regression analysis revealed that adopting agricultural insurance is positively influenced by the farmers' perception of the insurance, educational level, household size andaccess to agricultural credit. Implementing strategies that consider these influencing factors andpromote awareness, while building capacity and trust, could facilitate farmers' adoption of agricultural insurance, especially in countries like Benin, where agricultural insurance is relatively new.