Exploring the determinants and recursive influences of land degradation and climate change adaptation technologies in Ethiopia: Evidence from a recursive multivariate probit model

Land degradation and climate change remain pressing challenges to agricultural development in Ethiopia, where rural farm households rely heavily on rainfed agriculture amid mounting ecological stress and climate risks. Although Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices are central to mitigating these risks, intervention outcomes are mixed, and most empirical studies rarely consider the recursive and endogenous nature of farmers’ adaptation decisions, failing to distinguish between independent and conditionally interdependent adaptation decisions, leaving a missing link in our understanding of their combined effects. While the standard multivariate probit model accounts for interdependence through correlated error terms, it still overlooks the structural and directional connections among SLM adaptation choices. Recursive specifications explicitly capture how upstream adaptation conditioned the feasibility and effectiveness of downstream adaptation, incorporating both correlation and causal ordering across SLM domains. Using this framework, the study investigates the determinants and interdependencies among structural, agronomic, and ecosystem-based SLM adaptation strategies, employing nationally representative data and a recursive multivariate probit (RMVP) model. Using 15,839 pooled observations from two waves of the Ethiopian Living Standards Measurement Survey (2018/19 and 2021/22), we modeled the recursive relationships among the three adaptation domains. Results demonstrate that the uptake of structural and agronomic measures significantly enhances ecosystem-based adaptation. In contrast, agronomic adaptation is positively influenced by structural adaptation, revealing strong complementarities among SLM technologies. Other exogenous covariates, such as education level, annual expenditure, food security, landholding, and participation in watershed programs, significantly increase the likelihood of adaptation, whereas market distance and plot remoteness constrain adaptation decisions. Viewing decision-making as a recursive process offers a more realistic depiction of how smallholders integrate multiple adaptation pathways amid complex socioeconomic and ecological constraints. Policies that promote integrated SLM practices are more likely to yield resilient, sustainable, and climate-smart land-use outcomes in Ethiopia.