Experimental evidence for a dual pathway model analysis of coping with the climate crisis (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Relationship between Environmental Worldviews, Emotions and Personal Efficacy in Climate Change
International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 2014
This study investigates the effects of a video on the Australian viewers’ environmental worldviews, their emotions and personal efficacy in climate change. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were employed to test the associations between the constructs. The main theoretical contribution relates to the mediating role of emotions in climate change communication. Results further show that the video increased viewers’ perception that they can influence climate change outcomes, as well as encourage others to reduce the effects of climate change. Findings suggest that effective climate change communication has to target people’s emotions. Policy should be directed to climate change communication tools with a focus on emotional engagement to encourage people to take personal responsibility in climate change and act, catalysing the desired behavioural change.
Climate change anxiety, fear, and intention to act
Frontiers in psychology, 2024
Climate change anxiety (CCA) is an emerging yet not clearly defined construct. Here, we examine the relationship between 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. To this purpose, young and healthy volunteers were assigned to three different framing conditions. Their emotional responses as well as eco-emotions and beliefs about climate change 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. Overall, 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.
Efficacy, Action, and Support for Reducing Climate Change Risks
Risk Analysis, 2018
A growing body of research demonstrates that believing action to reduce the risks of climate change is both possible (self-efficacy) and effective (response efficacy) is essential to motivate and sustain risk mitigation efforts. Despite this potentially critical role of efficacy beliefs, measures and their use vary wildly in climate change risk perception and communication research, making it hard to compare and learn from efficacy studies. To address this problem and advance our understanding of efficacy beliefs, this article makes three contributions. First, we present a theoretically motivated approach to measuring climate change mitigation efficacy, in light of diverse proposed, perceived, and previously researched strategies. Second, we test this in two national survey samples (Amazon's Mechanical Turk N = 405, GfK Knowledge Panel N = 1,820), demonstrating largely coherent beliefs by level of action and discrimination between types of efficacy. Four additive efficacy scales emerge: personal self-efficacy, personal response efficacy, government and collective self-efficacy, and government and collective response efficacy. Third, we employ the resulting efficacy scales in mediation models to test how well efficacy beliefs predict climate change policy support, controlling for specific knowledge, risk perceptions, and ideology, and allowing for mediation by concern. Concern fully mediates the relatively strong effects of perceived risk on policy support, but only partly mediates efficacy beliefs. Stronger government and collective response efficacy beliefs and personal self-efficacy beliefs are both directly and indirectly associated with greater support for reducing the risks of climate change, even after controlling for ideology and causal beliefs about climate change.
How people react to threatening information such as climate change is a complicated matter. While people with a high environmental self-identity tend to react approach-motivated by engaging in pro-environmental behaviour, people of low environmental self-identity may exhibit proximal defence behaviour, by avoiding and distracting themselves from potentially threatening stimuli caused by identified anxious thoughts and circumstances. This psychological theory has recently been tested in experimental studies in which the results suggest that the promotion of climate change information can also backfire. Based on these findings, we propose an agent-based model to address influences on anxiety and correlated pro-environmental actions in relation to societal attitudes of climate change scepticism and environmental self-identity.
Youth
The present study examined the relationship between adolescents’ efficacy beliefs (both personal and collective), climate anxiety (as measured with climate worry), group dynamics during an environmental intervention, and behavioral intentions in a setting where their agency was called upon. Data were collected in French-speaking Switzerland during and after four environmental education interventions during which adolescents developed climate-related projects or narratives in small groups. Questionnaire data (N = 150 adolescents) were matched with observations (from group dynamics) and interview data (from teachers). Self- and collective efficacy, climate anxiety, citing group work as a most interesting part of the intervention, and observed group attention were all positively related to stronger pro-environmental intentions. In addition, feeling involved in the group was also indirectly related to pro-environmental behaviors, through climate anxiety. Overall, our results suggest tha...
Explaining pro-environmental behavior with a cognitive theory of stress
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2006
Based on cognitive stress theory we present a model that aims at explaining individual pro-environmental behavior: environmental stressors (e.g. pollution in domestic and work contexts), mediated via appraisal processes (demand appraisal, self-efficacy), activate problem-focused coping. This in turn leads to pro-environmental behavior in various behavioral domains (social engagement, privatesphere and workplace). Structural equation models were used to test the proposed model. Questionnaire data from Studies 1 and 2 suggest that the theory offers a good explanation of pro-environmental behavior. However, self-efficacy beliefs did not predict problemfocused coping or pro-environmental behavior. In a modified model, we hypothesized that with environmental problems as stressors, it would be collective (rather than individual) efficacy that determines coping attempts and pro-environmental behavior. Studies 3 and 4 found support for this modified model. Taken together the four studies lent support to our basic idea that appraisal processes activate problem-focused coping, which in turn leads to pro-environmental behavior.