Building community resilience to economic impacts of climate change on livelihoods: the methodological perspective

Abstract

Climate change increasingly impacts the livelihoods of communities worldwide, damaging their economies. This raises the necessity of investigating approaches to build community resilience to the economic impacts of climate change. Thus, this study aims to propose a suitable methodology for investigating the economic impacts of climate change on communities using Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), an approach under system thinking. A systematic literature review of economic models of climate change was adopted as the best-suited secondary data collection method to identify economic parameters to be investigated. Then, following the philosophical position of interpretivism, with an abductive approach for theory development, is justified as suitable. Considering the credibility of the study, which had more than one data collection method, a multimethod qualitative study was conducted following a survey and case study research strategies. Four staged data collection was conducted following preliminary interviews, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and expert interviews. Three data analysis techniques of content analysis, cross-case analysis and CLDs, were used to analyse the primary data. Then, the steps taken in this study to achieve reliability, validity, and generalisability are mentioned. These findings will be helpful for researchers in structuring research methodologies to apply system thinking in social science research, ensuring reliability, validity, and ethics.