From Climate Change to Eco-emotions: An Investigation of the Roles of the Experience of Climate Change and Individual Factors on Eco-emotions

Abstract

This research aimed at investigating the respective roles of contextual (e.g., the ecological crisis experience) and individual factors (e.g., trait anxiety) in the elicitation of “eco-emotions”. Study 1 (N = 190) tested the extent to which the experience of climate change influences the experience of eco-emotions depending on how it is appraised. The results showed that, after reading a vignette describing climate change as a threat, a great loss, another-blame, or a self-blame, participants' anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, and guilt differed very little from one another. Study 2 (N = 1302) investigated the best predictors of eco-emotions. It revealed that participants' state anxiety and affect after an indirect experience of climate change and other events depended mainly on anxiety predispositions. Study 2 also suggested that the eco-emotions of climate anxiety and solastalgia-the latter comprising self-centered and other-centered concerns-were differentially associated with situational and individual factors: other-centered solastalgia is more strongly associated with environmental attitudes, while severe climate anxiety is more strongly associated with subjective experience of climate change, trait anxiety, and pro-environmental behaviors. Taken together, it appears that individual factors play a greater role than the experience of climate change in the elicitation of eco-emotions. Results are discussed in terms of future research avenues for understanding eco-emotions in their link with pro-environmental behavior.