Climate change-related natural hazards severely affect farmers' livelihoods. This study explores how farmers in the vulnerable western lowlands of Nepal are affected by floods, heatwaves, and cold spells, how they adapt, and the factors influencing their risk perception and intended adaptation behaviour. Data were collected through a survey of 350 randomly selected farming households from the Banke and Bardiya districts in the Tarai region. Farmers identified environmental risks as the most severe risks to their agricultural production, and their main adaptation strategies, including changes to planting dates and crop varieties and increasing the use of fertilisers and pesticides. Following protection motivation theory and using structural equation modelling, we found that farmers' risk perception and adaptation behaviour in response to three specific hazards (floods, heatwaves, and cold spells). The flood impact model showed that self-efficacy, perceived responsibility, response cost, trust, and concern partially influenced flood risk perception. These, in turn, mediated affected farmers’ intended flood adaptation strategies. Flood damage experience thoroughly explained flood adaptation behaviour and was mediated by flood risk perception. Risk perception of flood has the significant mediation effects in the flood model, but heatwave and cold spell risk perception did not have any mediation effect in neither the heatwave nor the cold spells models. We attribute this discrepancy to the fact that slow and rapid onset hazards are perceived differently. These problems were compounded by farmers also lacking both awareness and the requisite knowledge of how to deal with the impacts of the climate change related slow-onset hazards that will become more frequent as climate change continues, unabated. These differences will need to be accommodated in sustainable was in community awareness and disaster management programs to increase adaptive and resilient community capacity for the future.

与气候变化有关的自然灾害严重影响了农民的生计。这项研究探索了尼泊尔脆弱的西部低地的农民如何受到洪水，热浪和寒冷天气的影响，他们如何适应气候变化，以及影响其风险感知和预期适应行为的因素。通过对塔莱地区Banke和Bardiya地区的350个随机选择的农户进行的调查收集了数据。农民认为环境风险是对其农业生产最严重的风险，也是他们的主要适应战略，包括改变播种日期和作物品种以及增加肥料和农药的使用。遵循保护动机理论并使用结构方程模型，我们发现农民 应对三种特定危害（洪水，热浪和寒冷天气）的风险感知和适应行为。洪水影响模型表明，自我效能感，责任感，响应成本，信任和关注因素在一定程度上影响了洪水风险的感知。这些反过来又介导了受影响农民的预期洪水适应策略。洪水灾害的经历彻底解释了洪水的适应行为，并通过洪水风险感知来进行调节。洪水风险感知在洪水模型中具有显着的中介作用，但是热浪和冷态风险感知在热浪和冷态模型中都没有任何中介作用。我们将此差异归因于对慢速和快速发作危险的看法有所不同。农民还缺乏如何应对气候变化相关的缓慢发作危害的意识和必要知识，使这些问题更加复杂，随着气候变化的持续不断，这种危害将变得更加频繁，而且不减缓。这些差异将需要在社区意识和灾难管理计划中的可持续发展中得到解决，以增强未来适应性和复原力的社区能力。