College of Education, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Dec 23;21(1):23. doi: 10.3390/ijerph21010023.
The occurrence of severe and extreme weather events that have been attributed to a changed climate system and the widespread dissemination of the impacts of these events in the media can lead people to experience concern, worry, and anxiety, which we examined in two studies. In Study 1, we observed that people more frequently expressed worry than anxiety about the impacts of climate change in six areas. People were more frequently worried and anxious about the effects of climate change on future generations and about societal responses (or lack of a response) to climate change. The levels of anxiety that people expressed were significantly higher than the worry people reported when anxiety was their modal response. In Study 2, we observed that both climate change worry and anxiety were negatively correlated with psychological distance from climate change. Overall, climate change worry and psychological distance significantly predicted climate-sustainable behaviors. Our study was among the first to use developed measures of climate change worry, anxiety, and psychological distance to examine peoples' responses across some of the possible impact and consequence areas of climate change.
极端天气事件的发生归因于气候变化系统的变化，以及这些事件在媒体中的广泛传播，这可能会导致人们感到担忧、忧虑和焦虑，我们在两项研究中对此进行了研究。在研究 1 中，我们观察到人们在六个方面更频繁地表示对气候变化影响的担忧而不是焦虑。人们更频繁地担心气候变化对后代的影响，以及社会对气候变化的反应（或缺乏反应）。人们表达的焦虑程度明显高于他们以焦虑作为主要反应时的担忧程度。在研究 2 中，我们观察到人们对气候变化的担忧和焦虑与气候变化的心理距离呈负相关。总体而言，气候变化的担忧和心理距离显著预测了气候可持续行为。我们的研究首次使用已开发的气候变化担忧、焦虑和心理距离衡量标准来研究人们对气候变化可能影响和后果领域的反应。
