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Understanding perceptions of climate vulnerability to inform more effective adaptation in coastal communities [1]

['Laura K. Nelson', 'School Of Environmental', 'Forest Sciences', 'University Of Washington', 'Seattle', 'Washington', 'United States Of America', 'Alison C. Cullen', 'Daniel J. Evans School Of Public Policy', 'Governance']

Date: 2023-02

Abstract Coastal social-ecological systems are vulnerable to climate change with impacts distributed unequally amongst human communities. Vulnerability assessments, an increasingly popular methodology for understanding variability in vulnerability and its components, often fail to include or recognize the perceptions of individuals in the focal system. Perceptions of climate vulnerability are influenced by experiences, social networks, and cognitive biases, and often differ from vulnerability as measured by subject experts. Because perceptions influence human behavior, including if and how people take adaptive action, a failure to recognize perceptions can lead to ineffective adaptation plans and an incomplete understanding of system vulnerability. Here, as part of a novel, multi-method effort to evaluate vulnerability to climate change in the California Current social-ecological system, we survey fishers from Washington, Oregon, and California to understand their perceived vulnerability and investigate what factors drive variability in their views. We find that while there is a connection between some factors known to influence vulnerability of fishers, including vessel size and the diversity of fishing portfolios, the most significant predictor of higher perceived vulnerability was environmental worldview, specifically a belief that climate change is occurring. Motivation to adapt is also influenced by the sentiment that the impacts of climate change are more urgent and consequential than other problems; thus, we also evaluate how concern levels for environmental issues compare to other challenges that may affect fishing success and wellbeing. While just under half think that they will be personally harmed by climate change, generally the fishers were more concerned about issues like costs and regulations than they were about environmental impacts. This assessment of perceptions highlights the importance of communication and addressing cognitive barriers to adaptation in the effort to develop climate resilient fisheries and fishing communities in the United States.

Citation: Nelson LK, Cullen AC, Koehn LE, Harper S, Runebaum J, Bogeberg M, et al. (2023) Understanding perceptions of climate vulnerability to inform more effective adaptation in coastal communities. PLOS Clim 2(2): e0000103. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000103 Editor: Fanli Jia, Seton Hall University, UNITED STATES Received: May 4, 2022; Accepted: December 16, 2022; Published: February 7, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Nelson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: Data and R code used in various vulnerability calculations are available at https://github.com/lknelson05/climate_perceptions. Funding: PSL and ACC received funding for this work from the Lenfest Ocean Program (https://www.lenfestocean.org/). The work of LKN and LEK was supported by that funding. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction Climate change is having profound impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems [1–4], and though effects will vary by species, there will be substantial consequences for fisheries worldwide [5, 6]. Fishing has long been a central part of the culture and economy of the U.S. Pacific Coast. Indigenous peoples have fished and gathered shellfish since time immemorial [7–9], and commercial and recreational fishing has generated nearly $35 billion annually in recent years [10]. Those practices are at risk as climate-driven changes in temperature, pH, and oxygen are leading to shifts in community structure and phenology [11, 12], and range shifts of marine populations [13, 14]. Climate impacts and the resulting effects on fisheries are already apparent in the California Current [15–18], a highly productive eastern boundary current that is defined by seasonal upwelling that spans nearly 3,000 km from southern British Columbia, Canada to Baja California, Mexico. Upwelling systems like the California Current are particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification [19], which has significant negative impacts on calcifying organisms [20], and is also associated with altered ecological communities, food webs, and decreased fishery catches [21–24]. Ocean warming is leading to the deoxygenation of ocean waters [25] and the resulting hypoxia often co-occurs with acidification [26]. Low-oxygen waters have spread onto the shelf in some sections of the California Current, including in areas of valuable commercial fisheries [27]. The effects of climate change on the ecological components and fisheries of the California Current are heterogenous. For example, ocean acidification has a greater impact on epibenthic invertebrates like crabs, shrimp and bivalves than on pelagic fish, marine mammals, and seabirds [24]. Additionally, ocean acidification has caused high mortality in shellfish hatcheries [26]. Previous work has predicted groundfish fisheries may remain strong regardless of climate impacts [28] as many demersal fish like Dover sole, sablefish, and rockfish may be able to take refuge in cooler waters by moving north or into deeper water [29]. However, ocean acidification may be a source of vulnerability for demersal fish, even relatively mobile ones, through erosion of their prey base [24] and evidence suggests they are increasingly being impacted by deoxygenation in near-bottom waters [27]. Pacific salmon survival is also negatively affected by climate-driven food web impacts as temperature increases cause changes in the zooplankton community and a reduction in abundance of nutritionally important lipid-rich copepods [30]. Overall impacts on Pacific salmon are geographically variable [e.g., 31], and vary by species, but climate change is generally a key driver of population dynamics [32]. The human communities of the California Current, of which at least 125 have been identified as significantly involved in commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries [33], also experience heterogenous effects of climate change due to the distribution of the ecological impacts, resource dependency, and underlying social vulnerabilities. Current projections indicate there will be a shift north in the range of many species of the California Current [12, 13], with variable effects on fishing fleets depending on their location and target species. In the sardine and groundfish fisheries, the ability to adapt or benefit from range shifts is affected by port location relative to northward movement of species [34], and effects may be dampened or exacerbated depending on behavioral patterns of fishing communities [35]. In the Dungeness crab fishery, impacts of harmful algal blooms and the ability of fishers to adapt are distributed unequally across the fleet [36], and communities that are highly reliant on crab have also experienced greater exposure during recent climate shocks [37]. Climate-driven events like harmful algal blooms and marine heat waves have caused significant economic and cultural impacts as losses in commercial fishing revenue are compounded by downturns in tourism and other sectors [38, 39]. Large declines in salmon abundance have coastwide impacts, although they are felt more acutely in some areas [40], notably within Indigenous communities of the Pacific Coast whose health, traditions, and food security are affected by the declines in salmon, shellfish, and other species [41–43]. In these coastal socio-ecological fisheries systems [44], the wellbeing and economies of human communities are closely tied to the health of fish and shellfish populations [41, 45–48] rendering benefits from, and relationships with, nature vulnerable as the abundance and availability of marine species are affected by climate change [49–51]. Vulnerability is a complex concept and is defined and measured using a myriad of methods and frameworks. In AR5, the IPCC shifted from a vulnerability to a risk framework [52]; however, because of its predominant usage, we have chosen to use the vulnerability framework from AR4 [53]. (See [54, 55] for further discussion of the similarities and differences between those frameworks, and [56] to see how they compare when applied). Here, we define vulnerability as a function of the exposure of an individual or community to climate impacts, sensitivity to that exposure, and capacity to adapt to the effects of climate change [57, 58]. Although the term risk is sometimes used interchangeably with vulnerability [59], here we adopt the convention that vulnerability explicitly accounts for adaptive capacity, while risk does not, reflecting just the potential impacts to the system. Given the interconnectedness of people and nature in fisheries systems [60], vulnerability assessments are often employed to examine the impact of specific environmental stressors, including climate change, and the ability of individuals and communities to cope with those stressors [58]. Vulnerability assessments can help to determine priorities and management strategies [61, 62] and identify particularly vulnerable communities [63]. This method, grounded in the risk and hazards fields as well as resilience science, has become a popular approach to understand how the type and severity of climate change effects varies geographically [64], the variability with which societies and people experience those impacts [65, 66], and capacities and constraints in adapting to changing conditions [67–69]. Assessments previously conducted in coastal communities have shown how factors like the degree of natural resource dependence, contribution of resources to wellbeing and health, and exposure to the bio-physical effects of climate interact and contribute to overall vulnerability [41, 61, 70–72]. Additionally, previous work has shown that some fishing specific characteristics like fishery participation [73], and vessel length [36, 37] influence adaptive capacity and vulnerability, and how fishery diversification can decrease risk by buffering interannual variability [74, 75]. Often, a goal of a climate vulnerability assessment is to inform plans for climate adaptation [e.g., 76]; consequently, understanding what drives vulnerability and the variability among communities and individuals is key to supporting a beneficial and equitable planning process. For example, some individuals may benefit most from environmentally-centered reduction of exposure, while others are best served by actions which enhance their adaptive capacity [77]. While risk and vulnerability assessments are valuable tools for risk management and climate adaptation, they are value-laden, and frequently ignore social and cultural outcomes [59, 78]. This omission often leads to a failure to address social and psychological determinants of risk or vulnerability [79] and the exclusion of impacts to important social and cultural practices [80]. Recent work has improved the inclusion of social indicators in understanding vulnerability in fisheries systems [81, 82], however examination of perceptions of risk and vulnerability in those systems remains less common. Perceptions of risk and vulnerability are shaped by personal experience, cognitive biases, and interpretations of information, which can cause risks to be both over and underestimated compared to quantitative measures [83, 84]. Risk perception is affected by demographic traits (e.g., age and gender, [79]), attitudes [85], and the social system within which an individual resides [86]. Additionally, feelings of dread and lack of control, varying levels of familiarity, voluntariness of exposure, and observability all affect risk perception [84]. Importantly, these disparities can lead to gaps in risk perception between the general public and those with authoritative knowledge in an area (i.e., subject matter experts), and the general population tends to feel higher levels of concern for low probability, high consequence risks than experts [83]. These discrepancies are particularly apparent in the United States when it comes to climate change, and there is a well-documented gap between public and expert perceptions of risk with regards to climate change [87, 88]. A range of variables have been shown to influence the public’s perception of climate change risk including their environmental worldview, level of perceived personal responsibility for conservation, and political ideology [89, 90]. Additionally, many of the factors previously described as affecting general risk perception influence how people view climate change and its impacts including direct experience with extreme events (e.g., severe storms, wildfires, and heat waves) that are likely to increase under climate change [91, 92]. Perceptions of climate risk also vary geographically, likely in part due to cultural and ideological factors and as a function of personal experience with local weather and anchoring on recent anomalous extremes [88, 93–95]. This variability is relevant as the perception of risk by general public frequently shapes environmental policy and management [96], and is particularly relevant in climate change policies [97, 98]. In this paper we report on the perceptions of climate vulnerability of fishers from the California Current to add to the conversation about climate adaptation on the West Coast and consider how the typical drivers of risk perception may be manifested in this context. Here, we employ a vulnerability assessment framework but use the perceptions of individuals to inform the dimensions of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. We investigated how perceived vulnerability vary among fisheries, geographic locations, demographic factors, and amongst those holding different worldviews. Finally, we evaluate how fisher concerns about climate compare with other challenges faced such as markets, infrastructure, and regulations, and how levels of concern are connected to perceptions of vulnerability.

Methods To assess perceptions of climate vulnerability in California Current fishers, we developed a survey consisting of three sections: 1) demographic and fishery participation information, 2) observations of ocean change, and 3) perceptions of wellbeing and vulnerability. The survey consisted predominately of Likert-scale questions, but also included open-ended opportunities for survey participants to elaborate on their observations of environmental change and challenges they faced in adaptation [99]. Following pilot testing, we deployed the survey using a mixed-mode method [100]. Fisher contact information is managed at the state level and California, Oregon and Washington differ in how they manage and share data; consequently, we targeted fishers from Oregon and Washington primarily by mail and those in California via the internet. 1,000 fishers from Washington and Oregon were randomly selected from lists of licensed commercial fishers and asked to participate in the survey. They were initially contacted with a letter explaining the project and invited to complete the survey using the phone or over the internet. They were subsequently sent two postcards as reminders. To reach fishers living in California we contacted fishing associations and other organizations that work closely with fishers including non-profits and port groups and asked that they share the information and a link to the survey to their memberships or networks. After our initial outreach, we also opportunistically took advantage of meetings or other relevant events to bolster responses which we believed were being somewhat hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic. A measure of exposure was derived from responses to a series of questions regarding views on the effect that ocean warming is having on fish species. Specifically, the exposure score for each fisher was an average of their responses for the fisheries that they reported participating in. Perceptions regarding sensitivity and adaptive capacity were enumerated using specific questions based on established indicators of wellbeing and adaptive capacity [82, 101]. Responses to a series of statements about how changes in the environment and fisheries have affected health and wellbeing were used to determine sensitivity, and responses to statements regarding the ability to adapt and perceptions about the future were used to calculate adaptive capacity. Additional questions in the survey concerning perceptions of risk and resilience were adapted from Cullen et al. [102] and Schumann [103]. The full survey is available in the (S1 Appendix). Ethics statement The survey and research methods were reviewed and approved by the University of Washington Institutional Review Board. Participants were informed about the intent of the study at the start of the survey and provided written consent by answering a question acknowledging their willingness to participate. Analysis In the vulnerability framework we use, exposure and sensitivity are combined to estimate risk, which when modified by adaptive capacity yields an estimate of vulnerability (Fig 1). Following Samhouri and Levin [104], we estimated risk as the Euclidean distance from the origin in a space defined by exposure and sensitivity (Eq 1). Vulnerability is calculated similarly by factoring in adaptive capacity and estimating the 3-dimensional Euclidean distance (Eq 2). We also explored an alternate method of estimating vulnerability by summing exposure and sensitivity and then subtracting adaptive capacity [61]. Results of the two methods of calculating risk and vulnerability were highly correlated (S2 Appendix, S1 Fig); thus, we present only the results from the Euclidean distance method here. The questions that were part of the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity indices, all five-level Likert scales, were scored on a scale from 0 to 1. For example, in the adaptive capacity index, answering strongly agree to the statement, “I could easily move into a new fishery” was scored as a 1 indicating high adaptive capacity, while strongly disagree was scored as 0. The questions informing each dimension of vulnerability were averaged to get individual scores of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Since a higher score equates to higher adaptive capacity, 1 –adaptive capacity was used when calculating vulnerability by Euclidean distance. We assumed that each component contributes equally, and each dimension was given equal weight when calculating vulnerability. (Eq 1) (Eq 2) PPT PowerPoint slide

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TIFF original image Download: Fig 1. Perceptions of vulnerability framework. Perceived vulnerability of fishers was assessed by combining perceived exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Design by SJ Bowden. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000103.g001 We next explored variability in and potential drivers of vulnerability. We used analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test the null hypothesis that perceptions of personal vulnerability do not differ among fishers varying in the (1) length vessel they fish on, (2) the number of fisheries they participate in, (3) the percentage of income they get outside fishing, (4) years they have spent fishing, (5) age, and (6) beliefs held about climate change. Because the belief in climate data violated the normality and homogeneity of variance assumptions of ANOVA, for that comparison we used Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test, a non-parametric alternative [105]. The survey questions regarding age, vessel length, and percentage of income from outside of fishing, and years spent fishing were all categorical, facilitating our use of ANOVA to analyze the responses. In addition to questions regarding climate vulnerability, the survey included questions about environmental, fishing, and social issues that may affect fishing success and wellbeing. We used these responses, as well as responses to questions about belief in climate change, the future of fishing, and conflict associated with fishing to assess if and how people cluster around types of concerns (Table 1). Participants were asked to respond if they were very, somewhat, or not at all concerned about an issue, and whether they thought about those same issues never, occasionally, or often. Level of concern was scored from 1 (not at all) to 3 (very) and weighted by frequency of thought, also scored on a 1 (never) to 3 (frequently) scale. The questions informing outlook and conflict were based on a five-level Likert scale and scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The indices were rescaled between 0 and 1 and clustered using hierarchical clustering and the Ward method; indices and individual questions were checked for correlation before clustering. The R package NbClust, which proposes the best clustering scheme after comparing the results from 27 indices [106], was used to determine the appropriate number of clusters. Following clustering, we used Welch’s ANOVA and pairwise t-tests with the Bonferroni correction to test whether the mean concern scores were different among the clusters. PPT PowerPoint slide

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TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Fishing concerns. Concern themes and the questions that contributed towards them for the cluster analysis. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000103.t001 To visualize how the concern clusters may relate to perceptions of vulnerability, we modified the vulnerability profile approach described by Thiault et al. [77] and created quadrants characterized by median values in a space defined by risk (exposure plus sensitivity), and adaptive capacity. We included cluster membership when visualizing the distribution of individuals in that space, and profile groups were determined by the quadrant that individuals were located in due to their combination of risk and adaptive capacity. The statistical analysis was performed using R [107] while the results of the open-ended questions in the survey were inductively coded and analyzed using ATLAS.ti [108].

Discussion Vulnerable populations often experience or perceive their vulnerability in different ways, even people who are susceptible in the same context [109]. We found that fishers from the West Coast exhibited a range of perceptions regarding climate change and their vulnerability to the impacts. There were some areas of relative agreement, like the fact that changes in fisheries are raising the stress levels, and others where people were spread more evenly across the spectrum, like concern about being personally harmed by climate change. These perceptions of climate vulnerability are complex and informed by social, cognitive, and experiential factors. Perceptions inform the ways in which people act and plan for the impacts of climate change, or why they choose to maintain the status quo, making it important to consider perceptions in climate vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning processes. The inclusion of perceptions of climate vulnerability may also help reflect real concerns of people that may be otherwise missed [110], and better understanding of community concerns and risk perceptions can highlight issues that, if not addressed, may impact the equity and effectiveness of adaptation [111]. Perceptions of risk and vulnerability influence how people engage with the idea of adaptation, shaping their feelings about the need to act and type of adaptive action to take [112, 113]. For instance, when faced with the same wildfire risk, some communities in Colorado perceived it to be a mitigation issue, others as an emergency response concern, and their actions followed accordingly [114]. In that case, social context affected how risk perceptions were appraised and converted to action; relative risk perception also drives motivation to adapt. In the risk appraisal process, individuals weigh the severity and urgency of the potential impacts from climate change against other challenges or issues they face [115]. Here, many fishers were more concerned about issues like operational costs and regulations than they were about climate change, and such competing concerns can be a barrier to climate adaptation [112]. The fact that people tend to discount future benefits more than future costs may additionally undermine the motivation to take action and incur costs related to adaptation for those who are focused more on immediate and concrete challenges like day-to-day operational issues [89]. The generation of vulnerability profiles [77] is another way to consider how perceptions of risk and adaptive capacity may influence the way in which individuals respond, some of which may warrant particular attention in adaptation planning. Regardless of their other concerns, if people perceive themselves to be at low risk to climate impacts the way they act to reduce their vulnerability, if they choose to act at all, will likely look different than those who feel more at risk. For example, one group of individuals in the lobster fishery in Maine had no plans for adaptation because they did not think they would be personally harmed, despite a general consensus among the fishers that ocean waters are warming, while many of those more concerned about climate change were already taking action [116]. A similar reaction may be expected here from individuals in either the high latent risk or lower concern quadrants. While these individuals may legitimately have low risk to the impacts of climate change, denial, fatalistic, or overly optimistic worldviews can influence risk perceptions and lead to avoidant behaviors or maladaptation [112]. Conversely, individuals in the higher concern and high latent risk groups may be limited in adaptation because they perceive themselves to have low adaptive capacity. While that perception may reflect an actual physical inability to adapt, as with risk perception there may be differences between perceptions of adaptive capacity and the objective ability to adapt [115]. While climate policy cannot be scaled to the individual, in the interest of effective adaptation it is important to recognize that not everyone will benefit equally from a single strategy and that risk perceptions will likely inform if and how individuals avail themselves of resources that support adaptation. Additionally, when it comes to adaptive capacity, policy makers should be aware that the strategy needed to improve resilience may be one that addresses perceptions of adaptive capacity, not necessarily just providing physical assets that have traditionally been assumed to facilitate adaptation. Since public support of climate policies is also influenced by perceptions of risk [117], and understanding perceptions can help in climate change communication [118], elicitation of perceptions of climate vulnerability may also help to identify management, communication, and adaptation strategies more likely to gain acceptance in fishing communities. Belief in climate change, significantly connected with perceptions of vulnerability in this study, is influenced by political ideology in the United States [89], as is overall trust in science [119]. Yet amidst the growing divide between political cultures and the associated worldviews, finding common ground on which to communicate and agree upon the need for climate mitigation and adaptation policies is increasingly challenging. Perceptions about adaptive capacity–here unrelated to belief in climate change–may be a less polarizing way to discuss efforts to address climate change. Future investigations will take a deeper look into what is associated with variations in perceptions of adaptive capacity, and how adaptive capacity may differ if we broaden our definition of what is contributing to it. The key findings from the most recent IPCC report [120], underscore the need for urgent action for all coastal communities as the options for protection and adaptation in ocean and coastal ecosystems are becoming fewer and less effective with the continued rise in atmospheric CO 2 levels [121]. Efforts are underway throughout the region to develop strategies to support the resilience of fisheries and fishing communities, including initiatives within the Pacific Fisheries Management Council. As we work to support the climate-readiness of fisheries, for all the reasons described above regarding the influence of perceptions on behavior and policy support, it is valuable in such efforts to account for the perceptions of fishers on the West Coast regarding their vulnerability to climate change. Here, we have applied a widely used framework to assess vulnerability but have informed the dimensions using self-assessed survey data to understand how those potentially at risk understand and interpret their situation. While perceptions are known to diverge from empirically measured or actuarial risk (in cases where measurement is even possible) [78, 84], here we focus not on assessing those differences but on understanding what factors contribute to an individual perceiving themselves to be vulnerable to climate change, and how perceptions of vulnerability are distributed among fishers on the West Coast of the United States. The results of this in-depth survey of fishers from Washington, Oregon, and California provides additional evidence that when it comes to perceptions of climate vulnerability, the worldviews of individuals hold great influence.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the individuals that took time to participate in the survey as well as the fishing associations and other industry members that helped share information about the project. We also greatly appreciate everyone who reviewed, piloted, and provided feedback on the survey and the project including Gway Kirchner, Jameal Samhouri, Corey Niles, and the other members of the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Lab at the University of Washington. We greatly appreciate the funding and support of the Lenfest Ocean Program.

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