Non-communicable diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, or depression, result from an interplay of physiological, genetic, behavioral, and environmental aspects. Together with climate change, they are arguably among the most significant challenges mankind faces in the 21st century. Additionally, the bidirectional influences of climate change and health on each other are undisputed. Behavioral changes could curb both climate change and the spread of non-communicable diseases. Much effort has been put into information campaigns in both fields, but success has been limited. In the following, the knowledge action gap is compared and analyzed in healthy and climate-friendly behavior from a practical point of view and the supporting theoretical models are highlighted. The analysis shows that self-efficacy plays an essential role in both areas of research for effecting behavioral changes. The models of ‘Planned Behavior’ and ‘Stages of Change’ seems helpful and can be applied and adapted to explain behavioral changes in health and climate changes settings. We compared two previously unrelated research fields to uncover new avenues for further study and stimulate fruitful transdisciplinary discussion. Future directions on how behavioral medicine and climate change research can learn from each other are discussed.

This study seeks to address critical gaps in climate change education research with regard to (1) emotions triggered in teenage students learning about climate change, (2) the students’ complexity thinking competence in the context of climate change consequences, and (3) the interconnections between different types of emotions and the levels of complexity thinking competence in teenagers’ explanations of climate change. The study drew on quantitative and qualitative data from 315 (2013–2015) and 246 (2021) teenage secondary school students from a pre-/post-intervention survey from Austria’s year-long k.i.d.Z.21—Competent into the Future program, in which almost 3,500 students aged between 13 and 19 have participated up to now. Climate change triggered expected types of emotions in students. Following exploratory factor analyses, these were clustered into two groups. Multilevel modeling revealed that the k.i.d.Z.21-modules had no influence on teenage students’ levels of complexity thinking competence in their explanations of climate change for themselves and humanity in general. The first group of emotions (i.e., angry, sad, helpless, insecure, worried and inspired to act) was associated with higher levels of complexity thinking competence in participants’ answers to questions about climate change and, therefore, designated “stimulation”. The opposite was true for the second group (i.e., apathetic, annoyed, and hopeful), which diminished the level of complexity thinking competence in responses and, therefore, designated “attenuation”. Future studies are encouraged to draw on the emotion measures developed for this study to replicate and advance this study’s findings. Educationists are urged to pay greater attention to emotions in climate change education.

Latest findings of the IPCC highlight the fact that there is an urgent need for climate action on both individual and societal levels, because political regulations and technical advances just would not be enough to counter climate change. Acknowledging young people’s role as present and future decision-makers, their engagement is absolutely imperative in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 13, “Climate Action.” Therefore, new methods of teaching and learning are necessary, and they need to encourage transformative learning, which, it is assumed, will lay foundations for transformative engagement. Research in the field of science education credits scientific literacy vision III as fostering transformative learning and engagement. In this study, transdisciplinary education is analyzed as a promising concept that enables exchange of knowledge, experiences, and perspectives between students and scientific partners while they jointly complete research on real-world issues. A quantitative analysis capturing scientific literacy and transformative engagement for climate action of Austrian and German secondary school students (N = 162) is carried out alongside a literature review. This study reveals that the didactical concept of transdisciplinary education notably contributes to the implementation of scientific literacy vision III as well as vision II. According to the results, the three visions of scientific literacy are predictors for transformative engagement for climate action, assuming to be preceded by a transformative learning process. These encouraging findings need to be replicated by further scholars in other contexts.