Background Skin cancers are the most common malignancies in Iran. According to the statistics, skin cancer is the most prevalent cancer in Ilam city. This study is conducted to evaluate skin cancer coping of farmers in rural areas of Ilam city. Methods This is a cross‐sectional study. Samples were collected by multistage random sampling. The required data were collected by a researcher‐made questionnaire from 248 farmers in rural areas of Ilam city. Questions were based on the protection motivation theory, and they were related to the subscales of response efficacy, self‐efficacy, and response costs. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16. Results Results of this study indicated that efficacy and perceived self‐efficacy in farmers were low and response cost was high. The efficacy and perceived self‐efficacy were high in 18.1% and 4.8% of farmers, respectively, and only 4.4% of them had low response costs, in association with protective behaviors. Regarding coping appraisal status also results showed that 204 people of farmers (82.3%) were unacceptable, one person (0.4%) was in the borderline, and 43 people (17.3%) were acceptable. There was a statistically significant association between coping appraisal status and education level and also income amount (P < 0.001) but there was no statistically significant association between coping appraisal status and family size (P > 0.670). Conclusion The founding proved that a coping appraisal is a beneficial approach for predicting cognitive determinants of skin cancer behavior among rural farmers. The most farmers have been the low level of coping appraisal (82.3% were unacceptable).