Internships

Karena Yan ’23

Major

Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Project Title

Modeling Farmer Decision-making Frameworks: Impacts on Adaptation and Policy Outcomes in Nepal

Presentation Link

View Karena's Presentation

Certificate(s): Environmental Studies

Climate change is expected to significantly threaten the crop yields of small-holder farmers. Adaptation may require changes in livelihood strategy, such as migrating or investing in cash crops. I applied an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate a South Asian agricultural community’s adaptation to climate change under different decision-making frameworks. I built three alternate frameworks into the ABM that drew from theories in decision-making psychology — imitation, satisficing and habitual learning — and tested them under differing degrees of climate change. My results showed that livelihood choices and community outcomes differed substantially depending on how the farmer decision-making process was modeled. Furthermore, I found that policy recommendations that were effective in increasing average community income and reducing inequality in the original version of the ABM were not robust under all decision-making frameworks. Practically, this suggests that developing effective policies requires an understanding of how target populations generally make decisions. I learned a great deal about the challenges and opportunities of ABM, and I explored new fields in psychology and sociology. My work piqued my interest in socio-environmental systems modeling and the various intersections of social sciences and environmental issues.