Sargisson, Rebecca J.Milfont, Taciano L.Gago, Tomás2026-06-252026-06-252026https://hdl.handle.net/10289/18420Climate change stands as one of the most pressing crises threatening the world today, affecting natural environments, community resources and functioning, and individual’s health. As this crisis worsens, people are increasingly reporting experiencing negative affective reactions to climate change, even when they have not themselves been directly impacted by it. These various reactions, described under the umbrella term of “climate anxiety”, have been the focus of numerous studies, but the lack of a consistent definition and theory of climate anxiety has hindered scholars’ ability to integrate and build on the knowledge gained from these studies. My aim with this thesis is to contribute to this integration effort by articulating the various contributions from other scholars into a cohesive and holistic conceptualization of climate anxiety, and to examine how prevalent and adaptive this phenomenon is. Thus, the first study in my thesis (Chapter 3) is a metaanalysis of 25 studies examining the link between climate anxiety and psychological wellbeing. In this study, we found there was a strong association between these variables, whereby higher levels of climate anxiety were associated with lower levels of wellbeing. Given the consistent association between climate anxiety and psychological illbeing, in the next study (Chapter 4), we found that measures of climate anxiety capture this phenomenon differently to how measures of domain-free psychopathology capture their respective target constructs, by focusing more on affective reactions and less on somatic complaints. Additionally, we also found evidence supporting the convergence of the different climate anxiety measures, indicating they could be capturing the same underlying trait, and raising questions about the lack of parsimony in climate anxiety measuring. To address these concerns, in Chapter 5, we report a mixed-methods study where we developed a condensed climate anxiety measure with a wider representation of the various features associated with climate anxiety using Rasch modelling. Despite its wider content representation and ability to differentiate between high levels of climate anxiety, our measure did not predict wellbeing outcomes better than an existing eco-anxiety measure. Therefore, for the next study (Chapter 6), we used an established measure of climate anxiety to assess the prevalence of climate anxiety in New Zealand, finding that 1 in 20 New Zealanders report experiencing these affective reactions. Furthermore, we found that people who have been directly impacted by climate change, people with environment-dependent jobs, and those who did not feel prepared to handle climate change reported higher levels of climate anxiety. Lastly, we found that those with higher levels of climate anxiety also reported higher psychological distress and more engagement in pro-environmental behaviours. Altogether, this thesis contributes to the climate anxiety literature by providing a framework for the assessment of the various dimensions of climate anxiety and how they may be contributing to individual and planetary wellbeing. Moreover, the findings here may be used to raise awareness for the potential benefits and impairment associated with climate anxiety, and justify support for groups at increased risk of maladaptive climate anxiety.enAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.climate changeclimate anxietyprevalencequestionnairesproenvironmental behaviourwellbeingThesis