Climate Anxiety and Adolescents' Pro-environmental Behavior

Duration: 3 mins Publication Date: 30 Jun 2025 Next Review Date: 30 Jun 2028 DOI: 10.13056/acamh.13733

Description

In this Video Abstract, Jenna Spitzer discusses her co-authored JCPP paper ‘Feeling anxious and being engaged in a warming world: climate anxiety and adolescents' pro-environmental behavior’. Climate anxiety is increasingly prevalent among adolescents worldwide. Are climate-anxious adolescents prone to engage in pro-environmental behavior? Or might the association between climate anxiety and pro-environmental be curvilinear, such that high levels of climate anxiety become ‘paralyzing’? And do these associations depend on whether adolescents believe that, with effort, the worst impacts of climate change can still be prevented?

Learning Objectives

1. The association between climate anxiety and pre-environmental behaviour.

2. Moderate climate anxiety versus high levels of climate anxiety and the impact on pre-environmental behaviour.

3. Influence of environmental efficacy on climate-anxious adolescents’ predispositions to engage in pro-environmental behavior.


About this Lesson

Speakers

Jenna Spitzer

Jenna Spitzer

PhD candidate, Utrecht University, Faculty of Behavioural Science

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