Abstract：Against the backdrop of intensifying global climate change, a nuanced understanding of how climate change affects farmers’ production behavior—particularly their cooperative production practices—is of great significance for constructing a modern, climate-resilient agricultural governance system. While numerous studies have examined the impact of climate change on the emergence of sedentary agricultural civilizations, the diffusion of agricultural technologies, and various socio-economic development variables, few have focused on how climate change, especially long-term climate risks, influences cooperative production among farmers and innovations in agricultural organizational structures. In fact, the development of farmer cooperatives—representing both collaborative production and organizational innovation—has been a crucial force, alongside sedentary agriculture and technological advancement, in propelling Chinese agricultural civilization into a new era. This raises important questions: Could climate change, particularly long-term climatic risks, similarly stimulate cooperative behavior among farmers and thus foster the emergence and growth of agricultural cooperatives, just as it historically facilitated the formation of agricultural civilizations and the spread of technology? What challenges may arise in this process? And how might this developmental pathway be refined and optimized? These are questions largely overlooked by existing research.Drawing on near-complete industrial and commercial registration data of Chinese farmer cooperatives from 2007 to 2020, along with long-term climate observation data, this study analyzes these issues using long-term heat risk as a case in point. Employing the moving average model, the findings reveal that prolonged heat exposure significantly fosters the establishment of farmer cooperatives. Specifically, each additional day of annual high-temperature exposure over the past two decades is associated with a 14.0% increase in the number of cooperatives per capita. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is more pronounced in regions with lower levels of marketization, suggesting that cooperatives may suffer from relatively weak market competitiveness. In highly marketized regions, intense competition may limit the climate-induced formation of cooperatives. Mechanism analysis further indicates that prolonged heat risk increases farmers’ collaborative needs in areas such as agricultural machinery investment, while promoting large-scale land operations—both of which contribute to cooperative formation. Further analysis shows that while long-term extreme heat risk promotes the formation of farmers’ cooperatives, it also reduces the size and performance of farmers’ cooperatives, and that improving the identification of shell cooperatives, clearing them in a timely manner and reducing subsidies to them can effectively mitigate the negative impact of long-term extreme heat risk.This study contributes in three key ways. First, it offers empirical evidence on the impact of long-term heat risk on cooperative formation—a novel angle compared to existing literature, which often focuses on formal or informal institutions as drivers of cooperative development. Second, by examining long-term climate variation, this research supplements the predominantly short-term climate shock perspective found in current studies. Although a growing body of literature has begun exploring long-term adaptation in agriculture, few studies investigate how sustained climatic changes shape regional agricultural practices. This paper introduces a new metric—regional long-term heat risk based on extreme temperature data—to explore its influence on agricultural management models, thereby advancing our understanding of farmers’ adaptive behaviors in the face of prolonged climate change. Third, by comprehensively evaluating the quantitative and qualitative effects of long-term heat risk on cooperative development, this study provides a foundation for policy design aimed at enhancing climate resilience in agriculture. These insights are critical for advancing climate adaptation strategies, optimizing support mechanisms, and cultivating a modern climate-resilient agricultural system.
