Housing adaptations for climate resilience: Predictors of climate-responsive housing in coastal and savannah zones

Purpose – As climate change intensifies across the Global South, climate-responsive housing has become an essential strategy for protecting buildings in diverse agro-ecological zones. While technical solutions for climate-responsive housing are well-documented, a significant gap remains in understanding the adaptive determinants across diverse ecological contexts. This study fills that gap by investigating the factors that determine the adoption of climate-responsive housing in coastal and savannah zones. Specifically, it examines the factors that determine climate-responsive housing in each zone, how these factors vary across zones, and which factor has the most decisive influence. Understanding these zone-specific determinants is critical because the dominant barriers to adaptation differ across ecological contexts and policies that ignore this difference risk the inefficient allocation of scarce climate resources. Design/methodology/approach – Using nationally representative data from Ghana's 2021 Population and Housing Census (N = 5, 632 households), this study applies weighted logistic regression, marginal effects estimation, and mediation analysis to identify predictors of climate-responsive housing in Builsa North (savannah zone) and Shama (coastal zone). Findings – Predictors of climate-responsive housing differed significantly by zone: urban location dominated in the savannah zone (OR 5.42), toilet access dominated in the coastal zone (OR = 4.30), but homeownership was universally important (OR = 2.6–3.0). Further, resource-efficient housing contributed most strongly to overall climate resilience (r = 0.57, β = 1.12) across both zones. Infrastructure mediated 25–50% of socioeconomic and geographic effects, with electricity access emerging as the dominant mediator (43–58%), though substantial direct effects (60–85%) persisted. Research limitations/implications – The census was not originally designed to measure climate adaptation. As a result, proxy measures were developed to assess climate-responsive housing. These measures were constructed using the housing characteristics available in the census data. Practical implications – A key insight is that global housing adaptation policies often fail because different ecological zones face fundamentally distinct constraints. In savannah zones, electrification emerges as the most effective intervention, while coastal or urbanised zones benefit most from sanitation and household-level infrastructure. These findings call for targeted, zone-specific adaptation investments that maximise returns from limited climate finance resources. Addressing tenure insecurity, especially among renters, remains critical to unlocking household-level adaptation potential. Infrastructure investments should be framed as resilience multipliers, given their spillover benefits for health, productivity, and equity. For policymakers and international development partners, this means prioritising differentiated adaptation pathways, expanding electricity access in infrastructure-poor regions and improving sanitation in densely populated urban areas. Such context-tailored interventions are likely to achieve greater adaptation outcomes than one-size-fits-all strategies. Originality/value – This study provides one of the first cross-ecological, nationally comparative analyses of climate-responsive housing in Sub-Saharan Africa.