Effect of Households' Psychosocial Capacities on their Resilience to Shocks and Shock Coping Strategies

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Psychosocial measures that are posited to influence adaptive capacity include:

• Risk perception
  • The perceived risk of experiencing a slow-onset or sudden shock
  • The erceived risk associated with employing certain strategies to maintain or improve wellbeing after a shock
• Self-efficacy/confidence to adapt
  • The belief in one’s own ability to perform a task and to manage prospective situations
• Aspirations
  • To aspire means to seek to attain or accomplish a particular goal

Ethiopia PRIME Baseline 1

• Setting: Lowland pastoral and agro-pastoral areas
• Shock: 2014/2015 drought

This case study underlines the importance of psychosocial factors derived from a pastoralist household survey, conducted in the Jijiga and Borena regions of Ethiopia (Smith et al. 2015). People with a higher sense of control over their own life seem to be less likely to engage in negative coping strategies such as dropping children from school, getting into debt and reducing consumption. The level of self-efficacy has a positive and statistically significant relation with the recovery index (p < 0.01). This suggests that the perception that people have of their level of control over their own life is positively correlated with their ability to recover from shocks/stressors.

The PRIME Recurrent Monitoring Survey 1 found evidence of aspirations/confidence to adapt that boosted households’ resilience to the drought (p<0.10) and helped prevent them from selling or slaughtering their livestock and consuming seed stock (p<0.05). It also helped them seek out formal assistance including food aid and food/cash-for-work (p<0.05).

Ethiopia PRIME Baseline 2

The PRIME Recurrent Monitoring Survey 2 evaluated the 2016/2017 EL Niño and Indian Ocean Dipole drought. It found that evidence that aspirations/confidence to adapt helped prevent households from selling or slaughtering their livestock (p<0.05) and reduced their need for food aid (p<0.10).

Burkina Faso/Niger PRIME Baseline

• Setting: Agro-pastoral and marginal agriculture livelihood zones of the Sahel
• Shocks: Drought, erratic rainfall, and insect and bird invasions

This case study found evidence that households’ aspirations and confidence to adapt has a positive association with their food security and ability to recover from shocks (p<0.01)