Climate change anxiety, fear, and intention to act

It is now online the article: Climate change anxiety, fear, and intention to act. by Alessandro von Gal, Greta Fabiani, and Laura Piccardi, published in Frontiers in Psychology.

In this article, we examine the relationship between Climate Change Anxiety (CCA) and climate change-related fear in response to messages differently framing uncertainty and anticipation concerning climate change, exploring how the former differs from general anxiety measures. Emotional responses, as well as eco-emotions and beliefs about climate change of young adults, were collected. By employing a Bayesian approach, we found that framing the consequences of climate change effectively induces heightened fear and that CCA strongly predicted fear levels, while general anxiety measures did not. These results reflect CCA’s unique and specific nature in influencing climate change-related fear. Interestingly, we found fear to predict intention scores only following the framings that did not effectively induce action intentions, consistent with prior findings on fear without efficacy framing. Instead, reading about the negative consequences motivated action the most. Following this framing, we found that eco-anger, instead of fear, consistently predicted intentions to engage in climate action. These results emphasize the complex interplay between CCA, eco-emotions, efficacy, and behavioral engagement.