Cipriani Enrico, Gemignani Angelo, Menicucci Danilo
Department of Surgical, Medical and Molecular Pathology and Critical Care Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Clinical Psychology branch, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Pisana, Pisa, Italy.
Heliyon. 2024 Sep 26;10(19):e38461. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e38461. eCollection 2024 Oct 15.
Climate change is intrinsically complex and demands a certain degree of abstraction. However, different individuals report a wide range and degree of tangible and sensory experiences of climate change. As perceptual and sensory awareness of climate change has important consequences for the promotion of sustainable behaviors, pro-climate policies, and clinical interventions for climate-related disorders such as climate anxiety, new specific tools are required: herein we detail the development of a psychometric measure of perceptual awareness of climate change, as well as provide evidence for its discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity for sustainable behaviors. The administration of this scale on a representative sample of the UK population (Study 1) yielded a 4-factor structure, with items measuring perception of temperature changes and those measuring perception of humidity changes loading on separate factors, and two additional factors identifying the awareness of own feelings and perception of media attention on climate change. A second administration (Study 2) to an independent sample gathered from the Italian population supports the reliability of this factorial structure. As the rising field of climate neuroscience starts to investigate the determinants of perceptions of climate change, this novel scale will allow assessing the perceptual features affecting awareness of climate change.
气候变化本质上是复杂的，需要一定程度的抽象理解。然而，不同个体报告了广泛且程度各异的气候变化的切实和感官体验。由于对气候变化的感知和感官认知对于促进可持续行为、支持气候政策以及针对气候相关障碍（如气候焦虑）的临床干预具有重要影响，因此需要新的特定工具：在此我们详细介绍一种衡量气候变化感知意识的心理测量方法的开发，并为其对可持续行为的区分效度、聚合效度和预测效度提供证据。在英国人口的代表性样本上进行该量表的施测（研究1）产生了一个四因素结构，测量温度变化感知的项目和测量湿度变化感知的项目分别加载在不同因素上，另外两个因素分别识别对自身感受的认知以及对媒体对气候变化关注度的感知。对从意大利人口中收集的独立样本进行的第二次施测（研究2）支持了这一因子结构的可靠性。随着气候神经科学这一新兴领域开始研究气候变化感知的决定因素，这种新颖的量表将有助于评估影响气候变化意识的感知特征。
