Some Slice of Climate Anxiety … Is Good: A Cross-Sectional Survey Exploring the Relationship Between College Students Media Exposure and Perceptions About Climate Change

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Abstract

Climate change anxiety among young people of college age has become a prevalent topic, with debate on whether climate change anxiety is maladaptive or can motivate climate change action. Using a cross-sectional survey of 440 college students, the study investigated the relationships between college students’ climate anxiety, climate change media exposure, efficacy beliefs, and pro-environmental intentions. The findings revealed among other things, that climate anxiety had a significant curvilinear relationship with pro-environmental intentions with moderate anxiety predicting positive intentions and higher levels of anxiety were associated with negative intentions. Media exposure also positively predicted increased climate anxiety. Implications for climate change mitigation are discussed.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Senyo Ofori Parku, Shane Burrell, and Dr. Sara Weston for their support and feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the OSF repository (https://osf.io/pndaw/?view_only=19e04c842d8645a5be77619845b6aaa2)

Supplemental Data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2024.2354370.