Psychological capital and farmer families’ quality of life under the climate variability conditions

As one of the most fragile economic sectors of developing countries, the agricultural sector is constantly exposed to climate variability. In this regard, considering psychological capital and the need to adopt psychological coping strategies by the farmer families to encounter these conditions effectively has a crucial role on their quality of life. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of psychological capital on the quality of life of rural farmer families via the mediation of psychological coping strategies in the conditions of climate variability. To the best knowledge of the authors, so far no study has assessed quality of life in especially among the farmer households and none of them has investigated quality of life in rural areas. The primary research question guiding this study is, how does psychological capital impact the quality of life of rural farmer households, and what role do psychological coping strategies play as mediators in this relationship under conditions of climate variability. The statistical population of this study was rural farmer households living in Kermanshah province, Iran. Exploratory factor analysis, revealed that psychological coping strategies can be classified into three factors (belief/value-oriented coping, emotion/avoidance-oriented coping, and problem-oriented coping). Then, confirmatory factor analysis was performed via structural equation modeling with SmartPLS₃ statistical software, and indicated that 27% of variance changes in the quality of life variable of farmer families were explained by the proposed research model. Findings revealed that the psychological capital variable had the strongest effect on belief/value-oriented coping. Besides, the findings showed that problem-oriented and belief/value-oriented coping, unlike emotion/avoidance-oriented coping, mediate the relationship between psychological capital and the quality of life of the studied farmer families under the conditions of climate variability. Some recommendations were provided based on the research results.