Simulating Social Control Mechanisms in Changing Intentions to Implement Transformational Adaptation

This paper investigates by simulation the change of farmers' intention to shift from implementing incremental to transformational adaptation. An agent-based model is developed to simulate the change of farmers' intention. The intention level, which is composed mainly of opinion and information variables about incremental and transformational adaptation, is the main determinant of farmers' decisions of when to shift. Farmers update their opinion according to their connections in opinion networks layer and adjust their information according to their connections in information networks layer. The results showed that an increase in the number of farmers implementing transformational adaptation occurred when a preparatory phase was introduced. A preparatory phase is a phase to encourage further the farmers' opinion to implement transformational adaptation. This paper contributes to the understanding of the transition process to transformational adaptation and the modeling of the change of farmers' intention based on opinion and information of others in a different layer of network connections.