In the recent changed climate scenario, the impact of climate change on growing large cardamom in hill ecosystem is very much predominant. Sometimes it is observable that the large cardamom growers are very much ignorant about the ill effects of climate change discourses. The perception and predisposition are the two psychological attributes of human being which ultimately give birth to the behavioural component like attitude. The impact of climate change on large cardamom practices is influencing the attitude of the large cardamom growers in case of changing the practices like anything without knowing the pros and cons of their approach. Hence, the present study was conducted to analyze the attitude of the large cardamom growers of Sikkim under changing climate as large cardamom farming provides a sustainable livelihood option for the farmers of that region. The study was conducted at six gram panchayat wards under Regu block of East Sikkim district in Sikkim. Purposive, multi-stage and simple random sampling procedures were followed in the present study and the number of respondents was hundred. In the present study, attitude of the large cardamom growers towards large cardamom farming has been considered as the dependent variable and eighteen other attributes of the respondents were considered as the independent variables. Personal interview method with the help of structured interview schedule was followed for data collection. Major statistical tools used were descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and multiple regressions. Majority of the respondents showed high level of favourable attitude towards large cardamom cultivation. Correlation coefficient revealed three variables namely management orientation, risk orientation and innovativeness to be positively and significantly associated with the dependent variable, attitude of the large cardamom growers. Multiple regression analysis showed that two variables namely family annual income and management orientation have contributed significantly and positively but, the variable annual expenditure has contributed significantly but negatively in case of characterizing the predicted variable, attitude of the large cardamom growers and the entire explicability is 31.10%.

Keyword: Attitude; Climate change; Large cardamom; Sustainable livelihood; Explicability;