Development and validation of a measure of climate change anxiety

By S. Clayton, Bryan Karazsia. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2020

952 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract There is increasing attention to the negative emotional responses associated with awareness of climate change. We present three studies developing a scale of climate change anxiety. In Study 1, the scale was developed and validated in an MTurk sample of 197. Exploratory factor analysis of our item pool revealed a four-factor structure, with cognitive-emotional impairment, functional impairment, behavioral engagement, and experience emerging as unique factors. Cognitive-emotional impairment and functional impairment were considered to constitute subscales for climate change anxiety; along with behavioral engagement, they were all related to experience as well as to negative emotions. Neither climate change anxiety nor general depression and anxiety were related to behavioral engagement. Study 2 replicated the factor structure as well as the pattern of correlations in a second MTurk sample of 199. Study 3 examined the relationship between climate change anxiety and adaptation responses in a sample of 217, and tested whether climate change anxiety scores would be affected by the framing of a climate change message. Overall, results suggest that climate change anxiety is not uncommon, especially among younger adults; that worry can be differentiated from a more serious impact on one's life; and that climate change anxiety is correlated with emotional but not behavioral responses to climate change.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a644de5c13c6bc7ad64f7936632a6802b2d941c

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Citations in the corpus

Anxiety, Worry, and Grief in a Time of Environmental and Climate Crisis: A Narrative Review (2021, background): “Clayton S, Karazsia BT. 2020.”
Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis: An Analysis of Eco-Anxiety and Climate Anxiety (2020, background): “However, eco-anxiety is actually not defined by scholars as an official disorder, although it is pointed out that strong forms of eco-anxiety can require mental health care [8,35,36,81].”
Eco-Anxiety and Environmental Education (2020, background): “Then again, the leading author of the aforementioned APA report, experienced climate psychologist Susan Clayton, also herself argues that climate anxiety should not be regarded fundamentally as a problem, but instead an important sign that the individual cares about the state of the planet [7,42].”
Anxiety and climate change: a validation of the Climate Anxiety Scale in a German-speaking quota sample and an investigation of psychological correlates (2021, methodology): “…page of the article Climatic Change (2021) 168:20 1 3 20 Page 2 of 23 to investigate climate anxiety as a specific emotional response to the climate crisis, its potential impacts on mental health and well-being, and its consequences for climate action (e.g., Clayton & Karazsia 2020; Stanley et al.”
The green care code: How nature connectedness and simple activities help explain pro‐nature conservation behaviours (2020, background): “However, Clayton and Karazsia (2020) found that climate change anxiety was not correlated with behavioural responses.”