The Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Scale

By T. Hogg, Samantha K. Stanley, Léan V. O'Brien, Marc S. Wilson, C. Watsford. Global Environmental Change, 2021

359 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Anxiety relating to the ecological crisis, or eco-anxiety, is a subject of growing research significance. We used a multi-study mixed-methods design to explore eco-anxiety in Australia and New Zealand, validating a new eco-anxiety scale. In Study One, we developed and tested a 7-item eco-anxiety scale (n = 334), finding that this captured some, but not all, experiences of eco-anxiety, informing further scale development in Study Two. Exploratory (n = 365) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (n = 370) supported a final 13-item scale that captured four dimensions of eco-anxiety: affective symptoms, rumination, behavioural symptoms, and anxiety about one’s negative impact on the planet, which were each distinct from stress, anxiety and depression. A further longitudinal sample (n = 189) examined the stability of these factors across time. Findings support eco-anxiety as a legitimate psychological experience, reliably measured using our 13-item eco-anxiety scale, and differentiated from other mental health outcomes.

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

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