Till Örebro universitet

In this article, we summarize research about how adolescents relate to climate change. We show that climate change is of importance for adolescents’ mental wellbeing, moral development, and different forms of civic engagement, ranging from doing small things in everyday life to collective engagement. This is true both for adolescents who come in direct contact with the dire consequences of this problem and those who foremost relate to climate change indirectly through media and school. We argue for the importance of promoting constructive coping among adolescents and working together with this age group to support mental wellbeing, trust, and civic engagement.

Climate change is a global crisis posing exceptional threats and demands on our younger generations. Our aim was to understand how climate-change worry and hope relate to climate-friendly behaviors, life satisfaction, and negative affect in young people across Qatar and Sweden—countries with different climates and challenges. Data from young people between 16 and 19 years of age from Sweden (n = 277; 61.37% female) and Qatar (n = 134; 49.25% female) were used. Participants completed questionnaires online. Correlational and regression analyses were used to test bivariate and unique associations and moderation effects. Climate worry was positively associated with climate-friendly behaviors in both samples. Climate worry was positively associated with negative affect and negatively associated with life satisfaction in the sample from Qatar, whereas in the Swedish sample it was only positively associated with negative affect. There was a significant interaction between climate hope and worry on climate-friendly behavior (interaction coefficient = 1.44, p = 0.0032) in the sample from Qatar, and on life satisfaction (interaction coefficient = 0.61, p = 0.036) in the sample from Sweden. Climate hope’s positive effects on these outcomes were significant at higher levels of worry. This study shows the importance of considering both the unique effects and the interplay between hope and worry across regions to understand the impacts of the climate crisis on young people.

Based on earlier empirical research, the main aim of this chapter is to argue for the importance of promoting meaning-focused coping and constructive hope in relation to climate change among young people. We start by describing the role of meaning and positive emotions like hope in the coping process and how meaning-focused coping and constructive hope are interrelated. Thereafter, we describe several aspects of meaning-focused coping in relation to the climate threat and show that this way of coping is associated with both mental well-being and climate change engagement. We also review some studies that demonstrate how collective climate engagement can give hope and meaning to young activists. The chapter also aims to discuss the practical implications of these studies, both for different groups of adults who want to communicate with youth about climate change in a constructive way (like parents and teachers) and for young people themselves. We finish the chapter by emphasizing the need for promoting critical emotional awareness where it is acknowledged that emotions and coping are not solely individual experiences but are also influenced by cultural emotion norms, gender norms, and power. The age groups in focus are adolescents and emerging adults.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between exposure to climate change information in traditional and modern media, cognitive and emotional aspects of climate change risk judgment, and pro-environmental behavior (PEB).

METHOD: A cross-sectional online study was conducted on a quota sample of 1,075 participants (51.9% women) aged 18-79 years. Participants self-reported their exposure to climate change-related information in traditional (e.g. television) and modern media (e.g. social networks), cognitive assessment of climate change risk, level of worry about climate change, and the frequency of PEB.

RESULTS: Structural equation modeling showed a good fit for the parallel mediation model, involving cognitive risk judgment and worry as mediators between exposure to climate change information in traditional and modern media and PEB. Exposure to climate change information in traditional media had indirect effect on PEB through heightened worry, but not cognitive risk judgment. In contrast, exposure to climate change information in modern media had no indirect effect on PEB.

CONCLUSION: Since the link between exposure to climate change information in traditional media and PEB has been shown to be mediated by climate change worry, it is important to enhance the coverage of climate change in traditional media in Croatia, taking care to offer solutions to reduce possible negative impact on people's well-being.

Young people both are and will be greatly afected by climate change, an insight which can trigger a range of stressful emotions concerning the future. How young people copewith climate change as a stressor can be of importance for both moral responsibility and climate-change engagement. People often use a combination of coping strategies; however, the focus thus far has merely been on isolated coping strategies. Using a person-centered approach, the aim of this study was to examine: (1) patterns of climate-change coping among late adolescents and (2) if late adolescents characterized by unique patterns of coping difer regarding emotions concerning the future (worry, pessimism, optimism), moral responsibility, and climate-change engagement (outcome expectancy and climate-friendly food choices). A questionnaire study was conducted with 474 Swedish senior high-school students (16–22 years old, mean age: 17.91). A cluster analysis revealed three unique patterns of coping: The solution-oriented group (43%, high on problem- and meaning-focused coping), the avoidant group (33%, high on de-emphasizing and meaning-focused coping), and the uninvolved group (24%, low on all coping strategies). The solution-oriented group difered from the other two groups in reporting more climate-change worry, moral responsibility, outcome expectancy, and climate-friendly food choices. The uninvolved group reported more climate-change worry, moral responsibility, and climate-friendly food choices than the avoidant group, and the least optimism. The avoidant group was the least pessimistic. Our results reveal the importance of exploring patterns of climate-change coping to understand young people’s engagement concerning this global threat

This study investigates adolescents' climate change distress and climate denialism profiles with two cohorts (born in 2008 and 2006) using longitudinal data from two waves collected in 2020 and 2021 (N = 3,002). In addition, the explanatory similarity of the subgroups regarding general well-being and pro-environmental behavior was studied. Four profiles were identified. The largest group was named the normative-carefree group because they had low climate change distress and climate denialism. Another group named denialists also had low distress but higher denial. Both these groups were associated with relatively good well-being. The third group had elevated climate change-related emotional distress and low climate denial and was therefore named the emotionally involved group. They engaged in pro-environmental behavior the most. The last and the smallest group was called the overburdened because they had elevated distress accompanied by denial; belongingness to the group was related to low well-being. Estimated transition patterns showed that the profiles were unstable within a 1-year span. The results endorse that adolescents' climate change distress is ongoing and developing all the time, rather than being something permanent. The results also show that both climate change distress and climate denialism can co-exist among adolescents.

This entry reviews the concept of transformative learning. Transformative learning theory stresses a learning perspective for situations when actors in (self-)critical ways recognize and reassess basic assumptions and expectations that steer their thinking, feeling, and acting. The theory relies on the humanistic assumption that people have, via deliberative acts, inner capacities to change circumstances. Transformative learning is defined as the process through which actors transform problematic frames of reference. The concept has been applied broadly in sustainability studies, including environmental sociology. The entry discusses five such fields of research, with relevance for environmental sociology: (1) environmental and sustainability education research, (2) the role of emotions in relation to, for example, climate change, (3) research on environmental activism, (4) lifestyle change, and (5), on transformative learning on community/organizational levels.

Scholars in the field of Education for Sustainable Development argue that it is vital that educators take emotions into account when teaching about global problems such as climate change. How to do this in the best way is still debated, however. This article aims to contribute to this discussion by arguing for the importance of critical emotional awareness (CEA). CEA is vital for future teachers to gain, but also for their future students to learn to be able to fight sustainability problems in everyday life and in occupational roles. Through theoretical argumentation and insights from empirical studies, the article elaborates on the following questions: Why is CEA important? What components does this concept consist of? Some key characteristics are that CEA combines insights from emotion research and critical social science. It should be anchored in multidisciplinary emotion theories and research and should acknowledge both emotions and ways to cope. It is also vital to recognize that emotions and emotion regulation take place at individual and interactional levels and are, furthermore, influenced by larger societal emotion norms. CEA implies that these aspects are critically discussed in learning situations and that teacher education should give teachers the skills to lead such discussions. 

Few studies have explored climate change worry in an in-depth manner among adolescents. Through survey studies with two cohorts of adolescents (2010, 2019/2020) we investigated relations between different forms of climate change worry, mental well-being, and pro-environmental behavior and what role coping plays in these relationships. Results show that climate change worry was negatively associated with subjective well-being, and positively associated with climate pessimism and pro-environmental behavior. Relations were strongest between macro worry and pro-environmental behavior, and between micro worry and mental well-being. Problem-focused coping was a mediator between worry and pro-environmental behavior and between meaning-focused coping and behavior, while distancing decreased the positive relation between worry and problem-focused coping. Meaning-focused coping and optimism worked as buffers between macro and micro worry and pessimism in some, but not all, cases. Most relationships remained significant when controlling for other variables in path-models. Finally, worry was more prevalent in the 2019/2020 cohort. Our findings highlight the need to consider different forms of worry and coping in studies about climate change worry.

Climate-friendly food choices are still relatively rarely addressed in studies investigating climate engagement, particularly among young people. We therefore examine which factors correlate with intentions to make these choices among emerging adults. Our overarching theoretical framework is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which we extended with emotional factors (climate-change worry and optimism) and attitudinal ambivalence. We found that all factors included, except for optimism, correlated with the food-choice intentions. Climate-change worry was the second strongest predictor, after attitudes. Moreover, a measure of objective attitudinal ambivalence correlated negatively with food-choice intentions and moderated the correlation between attitudes and intentions by weakening it. The results support the validity of using the TPB model when explaining intentions to make climate-friendly food choices among young people. However, our results suggest that it is also important to consider emotions—in this case climate-related worry—and the existence of conflicting evaluations about choosing climate-friendly food.