Beyond Fear Control: How Threat-Focused Messages Associate with Self-Efficacy and Correlate with Climate Adaptation Intentions in Rural Ghana

Climate change poses existential threats to rural agrarian communities across the Global South, necessitating deeper understanding of how climate communication correlates with adaptive capacity. This study explores associations between perceptions of radio message framing and cognitive-affective pathways among rural Ghanaian farmers. Using a cross-sectional survey design, the study collected data from 384 smallholder farmers in coastal Ghana's Ada East District who reported their exposure to different types of radio messaging, threat appraisal, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and adaptation intentions. The data was analysed using PLS-SEM to examine correlational patterns among these variables. The findings reveal patterns that differ from predictions of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) in high-vulnerability contexts. Perceived exposure to threat-focused frames showed strong positive associations with adaptation intentions through both direct relationships and positive correlations with self-efficacy patterns; this study termed it the "productive fear association." This finding contradicts EPPM's prediction that threat messages without explicit efficacy-building content reduce self-efficacy. The study hypothesise this correlational pattern may reflect experiential validation processes, whereby messages acknowledging farmers' lived climate realities may resonate differently than messages introducing novel threats. Perceived exposure to culturally narrated frames showed no significant associations with any outcomes, and collective efficacy did not moderate intention formation pathways. This study proposes the "Authenticity Primacy hypothesis", a tentative framework suggesting that perceived message resonance with lived experience may be more strongly associated with adaptation intentions than abstract framing taxonomies.