Mental Mapping to Explore the Risk Landscape
of Wine Producers in Climate Change
Gábor Király, Bálint Koós
This research paper investigates the complex and interconnected risk environment confronting Hungarian wine producers in the Mátra wine region, a climatically sensitive area in Central Europe. The study employs an innovative individual-based mental mapping methodology, combined with qualitative interviews and collaborative card-sorting exercises, to comprehensively understand how farmers perceive and navigate multiple risk dimensions simultaneously. The research addresses a critical gap in understanding climate change adaptation in viticulture by moving beyond purely production-focused analysis to examine how institutional, market, financial, and labor market risks interact with climate impacts to shape farmer decision-making.
The Mátra wine region, located on the southern slopes of the Mátra Mountains in Hungary, presents a particularly interesting case study for understanding climate adaptation in wine production. Hungary and Central European regions face a paradoxical climate future. While moderate warming could improve grape ripening opportunities across Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, this is countered by increased frequency of extreme weather events. According to vulnerability assessments, the Mátra wine region ranks among only five percent of European wine-producing regions considered extremely sensitive to climate change. Climate projections indicate that by mid-century, Hungary will experience more favorable conditions for late-ripening grape varieties, but severe frost damage is expected every 4–10 years, while extremely hot days are projected to increase to 27–40 days by century’s end.
Methodology and Research Approach
The study employed a two-stage qualitative research design. The initial exploratory stage, conducted between August 2021 and April 2022, involved nine interviews with local vine growers and winemakers to understand dominant climate change perceptions and typical adaptation practices. The second phase, based on purposive sampling, included seven in-depth interviews with nine participants from bottling wineries between July 2022 and April2023. These wineries represent the upper tier of the value chain, being family-run operations with no external capital involvement, though larger holdings employ permanent non-family workers.
The research protocol combined a co-creative card-sorting technique with semi-structured interviews. Participants identified risks, problems, and difficulties in their daily farm management, documented them on cards, and grouped them into manageable versus unmanageable risks. This exercise formed the basis for creating individual mental maps. The analytical procedure combined the Rich Elicitation Approach with six-phase thematic analysis to create a comprehensive final mental diagram synthesizing individual perspectives.
The Complex Risk Landscape
A central finding is that wine producers operate within an interconnected web of five primary risk types: production, market, institutional, financial, and labor market risks. These risks interact through cause-and-effect relationships and indirect influences, creating a dynamic, multi-element risk landscape that cannot be understood in isolation.
Production and Climate Risks: Extreme heat waves and prolonged droughts pose severe threats to vineyard operations. Heat waves accelerate grape ripening, which detrimentally affects nutritional value—grapes become too rich in sugar but low in acidity, resulting in unbalanced and flat wines. Vineyard cultivation decisions tend to be short-term and reactive, while strategic long-term responses focus primarily on vineyard planting decisions. Adaptation practices identified include leaf removal, water spraying before harvest, and early harvest timing—all tactical responses requiring minimal management amendments or investment.
Market Risk and Institutional Lock-In: A particularly striking finding involves the popular Hungarian white wine variety Irsai Olivér. Despite growing climate vulnerabilities, producers continue expanding plantings of this climate-sensitive variety because strong consumer demand makes it highly profitable. In the past 20 years, Irsai Olivér has risen from the 20th to the 7th most common variety in Hungary. This market-driven planting strategy creates a cultivar-specific lock-in compounded by institutional inflexibility. Critically, climate-resistant alternative varieties are not included in the authorized list of the local wine regime and therefore cannot receive planting subsidies, creating institutional barriers to climate-adaptive planting decisions.
Labor Market Risks as Primary Concern: Notably, labor shortages emerge as a more pressing perceived risk than climate impacts themselves. Vine cultivation requires extensive manual labor across multiple work phases—harvesting, pruning, leaf removal, tying, and suckering. The available workforce consists primarily of elderly residents aged 50–70 and migrant workers from Romania, with their numbers declining naturally. Regional industrialization and re-industrialization have created competing long-term employment opportunities, intensifying labor market competition.
Climate change exacerbates labor challenges through two mechanisms. First, the earlier harvest schedule (now beginning in early August) coincides with the hottest month of summer, making outdoor vineyard work physically hazardous and unappealing to potential workers. Second, deteriorating growing conditions may be partially offset by mitigation measures but ultimately raise labor demand. Farmers respond to labor pressures through mechanization and permanent employment, evidence of modernization and professionalization efforts. However, subsidies typically cover only 50% of mechanization costs, with slow administrative processing creating inflation risks that work against implementing labor-saving measures. Additional Production Challenges: Wildlife damage represents a growing issue in the region, driven by animal population mismanagement and summer droughts that drive animals to seek water in unprotected vineyards. This creates human-human conflicts within the regulated wildlife management governance system in Hungary.
Adaptation Paradox and Decision-Making
Despite clear perception that warming and reduced rainfall will significantly impact variety cultivation, vine growers’ decision-making does not reflect corresponding long-term strategic climate adaptations. Instead, adaptation efforts focus on short-term tactical responses for vineyard cultivation while long-term strategic decisions address labor challenges rather than climate resilience. This reveals a fundamental contradiction: farmers rationally recognize climate threats yet continue planting climate-vulnerable varieties because current market demand and institutional support prioritize these choices over future climate sustainability. The research demonstrates that farmers’ actual behavior deviates significantly from neoclassical economic assumptions. Rather than optimizing decisions based on comprehensive risk assessment, farmers use heuristics, follow established practices, and prioritize immediate profitability and labor security over long-term climate risk mitigation.
Methodological Innovation and Contribution
The mental mapping approach proved highly effective in capturing the complexity of farmers’ risk perceptions and decision-making processes. The visual representation of results effectively illustrates the dynamic complexity of human, social, and economic aspects of vine cultivation. The sticky-notes method encouraged interviewees to emphasize complex interrelationships of problems and risks within their decision-making contexts.
Key Conclusions and Implications
The research demonstrates that agricultural risk assessment and climate change adaptation cannot be isolated to production spheres alone but must integrate institutional (regulatory) environments and market risk dimensions. Successful climate adaptation strategies require holistic, cross-sectoral approaches recognizing that farmers’ decisions deviate from purely rational economic models and are shaped by interconnected institutional, market, and labor market pressures alongside direct climate impacts. The Mátra wine region case illustrates how legal rigidity of geographical indications can increase vulnerability by restricting varietal diversity and innovation rather than increasing resilience. Future research should explore how institutional frameworks can be adapted to facilitate climate-responsive viticulture while maintaining regional identity and stakeholder support.
Király, Gábor, and Bálint Koós. “Mental Mapping to Explore the Risk Landscape of Wine Producers in the Face of Climate Change.” European Countryside, vol. 18, no. 1, Mendel University in Brno, 2026, pp. 17-36. https://doi.org/10.2478/euco-2026-0002.
