To cope effectively with the impacts of climate change, people will need to change existing practices or behaviours within existing social–ecological systems (adaptation) or enact more fundamental changes that can alter dominant social–ecological relationships and create new systems or futures (transformation). Here we use multilevel network modelling to examine how different domains of adaptive capacity—assets, flexibility, organization, learning, socio-cognitive constructs and agency—are related to adaptive and transformative actions. We find evidence consistent with an influence process in which aspects of social organization (exposure to others in social networks) encourage both adaptive and transformative actions among Papua New Guinean islanders experiencing climate change impacts. Adaptive and transformative actions are also related to social–ecological network structures between people and ecological resources that enable learning and the internalization of ecological feedbacks. Agency is also key, yet we show that while perceived power may encourage adaptations, it may discourage more transformative actions.

为了有效应对气候变化的影响，人们将需要在现有的社会生态系统内改变现有的做法或行为（适应），或者做出更根本的改变，从而改变主导的社会生态关系并创造新的系统或未来（转变）。 。在这里，我们使用多层网络建模来检验适应能力的不同领域（资产，灵活性，组织，学习，社会认知结构和代理）如何与适应性和变革性行动相关。我们发现与影响过程一致的证据，在该过程中，社会组织的各个方面（在社交网络中暴露于他人）鼓励了遭受气候变化影响的巴布亚新几内亚岛民之间的适应性和变革性行动。适应性和变革性行动也与人与生态资源之间的社会生态网络结构有关，这些结构使人们能够学习和内部化生态反馈。代理权也是关键，但是我们证明，虽然感知的权力可能会鼓励适应，但它可能会阻止采取更多的变革性行动。