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It has been argued that major, purposeful action often resulting in significant changes in structure or function, known as transformational adaptation, is required in some areas of the agricultural sector to adapt to climate change and other driving factors. Yet there is limited understanding of what factors instigate and facilitate this scale of change. From a social science perspective, one key question remains: to what extent do agribusinesses need social capital to plan and implement large-scale, transformational adaptation options, compared with incremental-scale adaptations? Data drawn from Australian primary industries found that those undertaking transformational change had more far-reaching information and knowledge network connections yet less extensive social links to family, friends and colleagues. These findings demonstrate that strong access to knowledge and weak social ties increases the ability to facilitate action that differs from established social norms, hence empowering transformational adaptors to plan and implement novel strategies and options.

Action for climate change is not occurring as fast, widely or significantly as may be required to address major climate change impacts^{1, 2}. Recent reports^{3, 4, 5, 6} have the planet tracking above the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's highest rate for emissions and a projected 4 °C global temperature rise is not out of the question if current rates continue⁷. The consequences of a 4 °C (or more) temperature rise over the next century will presumably affect ecosystem services so that the productivity of agricultural systems will be altered and dependent communities and industries will be significantly affected^{8, 9}. To adapt to this new world, multiple scales of action are required¹⁰. The focus of this Perspective is on adaptation that is occurring in the Australian agricultural sector due to climate change.

Research in the field of climate change adaptation has used various typologies to define adaptation. One approach is to define three levels of adaptation: (1) incremental — moderate changes are made to existing actions and behaviours; (2) systemic — changes are made at the system or structural level; (3) transformational — large scale, novel responses create a fundamentally new system or process^{11, 12}. So far, the adaptation programme has been dominated by incremental adaptation approaches — such as technological fixes, intensification of farming, improvements to crop varieties and breeds of livestock, or water and soil management practices — which can be seen as reactive responses to a variety of stressors including climate change impacts¹³. These approaches can be ineffective in the long term^{14, 15} and can even lead to adaptation that has harmful effects, known as maladaptation^{16, 17}. On the other hand, transformational adaptation is often (but not always) seen to be anticipatory and focused on the long term¹². At the transformational scale, changes are defined as major shifts in goals and/or processes in response to risk and opportunities, for example, moving the location of production of specific commodities, making significant business structure or operational changes, or even choosing to leave an enterprise or industry altogether^{12, 18}.

Investigating transformational adaptation is fairly new, compared with research conducted at the incremental level. Therefore, unlike incremental adaptation, there is far less understanding of what factors instigate and facilitate transformational climate adaptation. Researchers have suggested^{19, 20, 21} that identifying the social mechanisms that can influence anticipatory adaptation could lead to a better understanding of the role these mechanisms play, which is of particular interest to this newly forming field due to the possibly significant impacts this adaptation approach can have.

For any agricultural system (regardless of the scale) to adjust to climate change, there needs to be a capacity for that system to do so. This 'adaptive capacity' is “a set of latent characteristics, or the potential, needed to adapt to climate change and the ability to be actively involved in the processes of change”^{22, 23, 24, 25, 26}. Increasing the adaptive capacity of a system can improve its ability to manage change by making it more flexible and responsive to a variety of climate impacts²¹. Recent research^{26, 27} has raised the question of how social concepts, such as social capital, assist in assessing adaptive capacity. Therefore, the secondary aim of this Perspective is to report an investigation into adaptive capacity from a behavioural perspective, specifically in the context of transformational adaptation.

Many researchers are now calling for an extension of the traditional economic evaluation of adaptive capacity and advocating a more holistic scope of elements that form adaptation options, including social factors such as behaviour^{27, 28, 29, 30}. The inclusion of concepts such as social capital meets this call^{24, 25}. The level of social capital within a community (or organization) provides some indication of its capacity to cope with change and adapt^{31, 32, 33, 34}, which helps to explain the ease with which 'change events' are accepted and incorporated into people's lives. Individuals with stronger, more informed and more effective networks have been generally regarded as more resilient to generic change events than those with weaker ties^{35, 36, 37}.

The large and growing body of literature surrounding social capital has created confusion over its meaning²⁷. For the concept to be useful within an approach that seeks to understand and analyse climate change adaptation, it must be very specifically defined. Most definitions have grown out of the work by Putnam³⁷, which included concepts such as norms, obligations, and trust with a focus on social capital being held within groups, communities or societies for collective action²⁷. Therefore, a focus on social capital theory as a way to analyse the potential for transformational adaptation actions taken by individuals can be a powerful approach to assess the assets or capacity of individuals to transform and adapt.

Drawing on other approaches^{38, 39}, social capital is defined as the collective social resources available to individuals in the form of networks of relations or connections that may be used to access other resources, coping mechanisms and general livelihood strategies. Thus, 'stocks' of social capital reflect the level of social interaction, networks and relations that exist within a community^{37, 40, 41}. Communities with increased stocks of social capital typically have reciprocal interactions and increased trust that are directed towards mutual benefit^{42, 43, 44, 45}. Social capital also includes knowledge and mutual obligation, and is developed through social learning⁴⁶. Thus, social networks can be seen as the embodiment of social capital⁴⁷ and a loss of social capital can mean the decline of network connections, trust and skills. Many researchers have applied this approach to social capital in the field of adaptation relating to disaster recovery (for example, from floods and fires) and the role connections play in building resilience or restoring communities following a disaster^{48, 49}.

To focus exclusively on group membership as a measure of social capital at the macro-level would be to miss a potentially more detailed picture of an individual's social relationships. Uncovering the social relationships that are crucial to climate change adaptation requires expanding our focus to include multiple types of networks (such as knowledge/information and social support ties). Accounting for formal structures and resource distribution is part of the decision making process when determining choices among adaptive strategies, but “a large part can be attributable to informal social relations and values — to social capital”²⁷. Therefore, capturing multiple forms of structures and/or connections will provide a more comprehensive description than adopting an aggregated or consolidated view. In addition, past research has also demonstrated that effective social support and information networks are useful in framing adaptation³⁰.

Finally, to investigate the roles adopted in network structures across incremental and transformational adaptors, we applied a synthesis framework⁵⁰ that measures social capital by examining levels of integration and linking⁵¹. 'Integration' refers to the number of social ties that exist within a network and 'linking' measures the ties between different networks at the micro-level. More recently, these terms have been referred to as bonding (ties shared within a network) and bridging and linking (ties that cross group boundaries to other networks to form alliances or that provide a connection to those with power and legitimacy)^{52, 53}.

The analysis we are reporting investigated participants' networks (knowledge/information and social support) with a focus on the structural similarities and differences between transformational and incremental adaptors. The results of social network analysis reveal a difference between adaptor networks in relation to both social support (Table 1 and Fig. 1) and knowledge/information (Table 2 and Fig. 2) connections regarding effective assistance and encouragement for change. Overall, transformative adaptors had significantly less social support network ties (Fig. 1b) than incremental adaptors (Fig. 1a), yet had significantly more information ties (Fig. 2b). In other words, incremental adaptors establish strong social capital by creating bonding ties in their existing social support networks, but transformational adaptors build strong social capital in (bonding) and across (bridging and linking) their information and knowledge networks. These results were reflected in comments made in interviews as well, where transformational adaptors expressed their effective and proactive ability to seek required information (that is, taking full advantage of existing network connections while also building new ties beyond geographic and industry boundaries) to make large-scale changes to their practices. However, they also remarked on the lack of social support from family, friends, neighbours and their colleagues within industry in the decisions and changes they were making; for example, they were told: “this is not the way this family does things”, “no one else is doing this, best we just follow the crowd” or “why do you always have to do things differently to everyone else”. Incremental adaptors reflected on the strong support they receive from peers and industry connections for the adaptation options they were implementing and stated that they were “content”, “happy” and “satisfied” with the level of information they received through their networks. A majority of incremental adaptors asserted that this came from a passive consumption of information (for example, receiving information from colleagues, neighbours, industry publications and natural resource management group sources) rather than the proactive seeking approach taken by the transformational adaptors (for example, going online to seek information or actively forming connections through study tours and site visits outside their geographical location and industry).

A multi-case study approach was adopted for this research, which used a self-nominating process for participation. The research focused on two sector-level cases (wine and peanuts) as well as a primary industry dependent community (Wimmera region, Victoria), within Australia. Each case study was undertaken to investigate the information and support sources used. Details of each case study site, coinciding participants and measures are provided in Table 3.