Climate anxiety, pro-environmental action and wellbeing: antecedents and outcomes of negative emotional responses to climate change in 28 countries

Abstract

This study explored the antecedents and outcomes of negative emotional responses to climate change among people from a diverse range of cultural and national contexts. We analysed cross-sectional data gathered in 28 countries (N = 10,963). Our results show that negative emotional responses to climate change are positively related to the amount of attention people pay to climate change information, rates of exposure to information about climate change impacts, and perceived social expectations regarding emotional responding to climate change. Negative climate-related emotions were also positively related to pro-environmental behaviours and inversely associated with mental wellbeing. Notably, while negative climate-related emotions had a significant inverse association with mental wellbeing in all 28 countries, they only had a significant positive association with pro-environmental behaviour (46%) and environmental activism (25%) in a minority of countries. Our findings highlight the broad international significance of negative climate-related emotions as a plausible threat to mental wellbeing.

Psychological responses, mental health, and sense of agency for the dual challenges of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic in young people in the UK: an online survey study

“… 31 Climate distress was previously found to be strongly and positively correlated with self-efficacy and responsibility—the two metrics we compiled to form our agency scale 31 —and observations available in Feb, 2022 (preprint) from young people in 28 countries suggest that engagement with climate issues and negative beliefs about the global future might be related to both climate distress and higher self-efficacy. 48 On the other hand, a 2020 study in US adults found that climate anxiety was not correlated with behavioural engagement. 30 Further research is needed to explore the potentially non-linear relationship between emotional and behavioural engagement with climate change.…”

The climate change distress and impairment scale: Introduction of the measure and first findings on pro-environmental behavior

“…To further probe the CCD-PEB association, future work should attempt to experimentally induce different statelevels of CCD and measure subsequent PEB levels. Additionally, future work should consider manipulating features of PEB such as the level of effort required and personal cost associated with the behavior to better understand in which contexts CCD and CCI predict PEB 61,62 .…”