Longitudinal relations between climate change concern and psychological wellbeing

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101713Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Concerns about climate change effects may negatively impact psychological wellbeing

  • Detrimental effects of climate concern might be stronger for younger people

  • Pre-registered longitudinal links between climate concern and wellbeing are reported

  • Climate concern leads to residual increase in psychological distress one-year later

  • No effect observed for life satisfaction, and effects were not moderated by age

Abstract

Concerns about the effects of climate change are mainstream, and the climate crisis might have greater psychological impact on younger people. We hypothesise that climate concern will have detrimental links with psychological wellbeing over time, and that this association will be more pronounced among younger adults. We test our pre-registered predictions using two waves of an annual national probability panel study—the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (N = 13,453). Cross-lagged models examining effects within the same individuals over time indicated that climate concern predicted a small residual increase in psychological distress, but not in life satisfaction, one year later. However, there was no evidence that the associations varied across age. These longitudinal findings indicate a novel link between climate concern and psychological distress, which is apparent across the adult lifespan.

Introduction

The 2018 report by the United Nations describing impacts of global warming increases above 1.5° (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2018) prompted headlines such as “We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN” (Watts, 2018). The thinktank Breakthrough reported that human civilisation will effectively end by 2050 due to climate change (Spratt & Dunlop, 2019), while Bendell's (2018) review concluded that there will be an inevitable societal collapse in the near future. Such publications on impending climate disaster reportedly caused some readers to seek therapy to deal with grief and despair for the future of the planet (Tsjeng, 2019); and public concern regarding climate change and its effects is prominent and has recently increased (Hughey et al., 2019; Leiserowitz et al., 2018)—illustrated by multiple large-scale global climate strikes in 2019 (Laville & Watts, 2019). Hence, general feelings of concern about the consequences of climate change may be damaging people's psychological wellbeing independent from any first-hand experiences of climate change (see de Matos et al., 2016; Halleröd, 2009; Powers et al., 1992).

Research on the association between climate change and psychological wellbeing has focused on the effects of changing physical environments on individuals' psychological experiences (e.g., Albrecht et al., 2007; Berry et al., 2010; Clayton et al., 2017; Obradovich et al., 2018; Trombley et al., 2017). There is more limited research on the links between psychological wellbeing and anticipation of climate change effects; that is, potential emotional distress and anxiety caused by an individual's awareness of the possible extreme climate change effects expected to occur in the future (Fritze et al., 2008). Pathologisation of climate concern may be inappropriate given climate concern, distress, or anxiety is not a disorder; it is a rational response to a real and salient threat facing the world in the near future (see Sarchet, 2019; Verplanken & Roy, 2013). Moreover, climate concern might elicit adaptive responses such as hope and greater motivation to perform pro-environmental behaviours (Ojala, 2012; Verplanken et al., 2020).

Nonetheless, measures of climate distress or worry have been shown to be associated with psychological distress (e.g., Searle & Gow, 2010; Stewart, 2021). Climate anxiety—a related concept to climate concern—has also been shown to predict emotional and cognitive dysfunction (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020). This prior research has established that climate change anxiety encompasses distress and impedes typical functioning; this finding is internally valid as “climate anxiety” represents a form of anxiety. However, the associations are not surprising since such measures already contain dysfunctional aspects in their items. Here we investigate if a “pure” measure of climate change concern—as opposed to anxiety or worry—is related to measures of psychological wellbeing in a longitudinal context.

Moreover, anticipatory awareness of climate risks may be more pronounced for younger adults (Milfont et al., 2021; Searle & Gow, 2010), or experienced in a qualitatively unique way by younger relative to older generations (as suggested in a review by Fritze et al., 2008). Furthermore, as age increases, regard to the future tends to decrease (Lomranz et al., 1986), so that thoughts and care about events in the future is relatively weakened for older relative to younger people. If concern about climate change is understood to be an anticipation of the future effects of climate change, then those who are thinking more about their future are reasonably going to be affected at a greater level. Moreover, given that young people show a higher regard for the future and many will be alive to see the more severe outcomes of climate change, it can be expected that younger individuals may have greater climate change concern. As such, the relationship between climate concern and psychological wellbeing is expected to depend on (be moderated by) age, such that the hypothesised negative relationship between climate concern and psychological wellbeing will be heightened for younger individuals relative to older individuals.

This brief report provides longitudinal findings on these two predictions regarding climate concern and psychological wellbeing in a national sample of New Zealanders. We hypothesised that higher levels of climate concern would be associated with a residual decrease in psychological wellbeing across one year (H1), and that this negative association would be moderated by age such that it is stronger for younger individuals (H2). We also report models including gender and socioeconomic status as covariates.

Section snippets

Sample and Procedure

We utilised data from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Survey (NZAVS), which is a longitudinal national probability panel survey (Sibley, 2021). Data collection began in 2009 and has continued annually, with participants largely recruited through random selection from the New Zealand electoral roll. The current study utilised data from Time 9 (2017) and Time 10 (2018), with a total of 14,049 participants retained in these survey waves. The Supplementary Material provides further information

Results

In the Supplementary Material, we provide detailed sampling information, results of attrition analysis, as well as descriptive statistics and correlations between variables across waves. Given the sample size, the critical value for statistical significance in all analyses was set at p < .01.

A one-sample t-test indicated mean climate concern scores are statistically greater than the midpoint of the scale at Time 9 (t (13,452) = 85.39, p < .001) and Time 10 (t (13,452) = 94.64, p < .001),

Discussion

We contribute research on the negative link between climate-related concern and psychological wellbeing, testing a longitudinal model of climate concern, wellbeing, and age. We found that climate concern was associated with a small increase in psychological distress one year later; however, there was no statistically significant longitudinal association between climate concern and life satisfaction. These findings held when accounting for both gender and socioeconomic status as covariates.

Author note

The New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study is supported by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT0196). Mplus syntax for all models are available at: www.nzavs.auckland.ac.nz.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sarah E. McBride: Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Matthew D. Hammond: Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Chris G. Sibley: Data curation, Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition. Taciano L. Milfont: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Supervision.

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      Citation Excerpt :

      Given the prevalence of negative feelings about climate change observed in our data, we believe that this is unlikely to be explained in any major part by mere dispositional anxiety. A recent longitudinal study has also demonstrated a negative effect of climate change concern on psychological wellbeing among a national sample of New Zealanders over the course of a year (McBride et al., 2021). We therefore advocate an ethic of care in the deployment of emotive climate change engagement strategies.

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