Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Fisherfolks on Climate Change Awareness and Adaptation in Lake Sampaloc of San Pablo City, Laguna, Philippines

Community's response to climate change will
vary depending on their specific location, economic
status, and level of vulnerability. Given that not all
communities are equally capable and there is no perfect
or single response to climate change that is effective for
all communities. Thus, practices at household level are
an essential precursor in dealing with the said
phenomena. Specifically, this study aimed to determine
the respondents’ socio-demographic and economic
factors; identify the respondents’ knowledge about and
behavior towards climate change; assess the
respondents’ climate change adaptation strategies; and
analyze selected factors influencing the respondents’
level of awareness and adaptation strategies on climate
change. A KAP (knowledge, attitudes, and practices)
survey on climate change was constructed, validated,
pre-tested, and employed to the 30 purposively selected
fisherfolks residing in the five barangays around Lake
Sampaloc. Descriptive statistics, Spearman’s Rank
Correlation and Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney Test were
used. Most of the respondents were aware of climate
change, social media platform as their source of
information, and perceived extreme weather events as
the effect of climate change like drought. All of the
respondents displayed a positive behavior on their
knowledge, attitudes and practices as evident with a high
level of overall mean score. High awareness level and
strong positive attitude of the respondents towards
climate change is a good indication that they are more
likely to express willingness to act on this global
problem. Awareness found to be statistically significant
with knowledge and practices which proved that
awareness is necessary in determining knowledge and
practices among people.