<p>Climate change and intensive agricultural practices pose significant challenges to crop productivity and environmental sustainability. This study examines the farmers fertilizers usage and climate change perception influences on the crop output in China Yellow River Basin by determined their cropping strategies, subjective norms, attitudes, their self experiences, and their threat perception related to severity and vulnerability of the climate change. This study leverages an integrated framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) to examine organic and chemical fertilizers applications, agricultural inputs and socioeconomic factors impact on crop output. Employing a structural equation modeling approach and cross-sectional data from 2022, this research analyzes a sample of 1,237 farmers of four provinces in the Yellow River Basin, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Shanxi are being referred. The findings suggest that organic fertilizers are beneficial for crop production and climate resilience. Farmers perceive that inorganic fertilizers worsen the environment, crop output and negatively contribute to natural disasters through environmental changes. However, sustainable use of inorganic fertilizers shows positive effects on both crop output and the environment. Agricultural inputs demonstrate seasonal variation, negative impact in the first season due to suboptimal implementation and positive impacts in second season by adaptive sustained management practices. Socio-economic factors were negligible but still positively influenced crop output. Farmers’ climate change perceptions significantly mediate farmers fertilizer usage behavior and crop output. However, farmer's personal experiences and their beliefs about subjective norms and trust in government institutions showed a strong positive influence on crop output. However, their perceived behaviors indicated that they are willing to cope with climate change vulnerabilities such as rising temperatures, droughts, precipitation, frost, and floods. This study is crucial to offer a new perspective and provides practical strategies to align policy regarding sustainable and systematic way of fertilization and agricultural inputs for sustainable production, and environmental resilience through collaboration of government institution and extension services.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>