Questionnaire for pre-registered study: Coping With Climate Anxiety: Efficacy Beliefs as a Form of Motivated Control

Facets of climate change related distress have been shown to be negatively associated with mental wellbeing, fueling discourses on their potential clinical significance. We assume that efficacy beliefs – a person’s confidence in being able to help mitigate climate change, individually or as part of a collective – serve as a protective factor against negative effects on mental wellbeing that may arise from climate change related distress. In this preregistered cross-sectional study, we put this assumption to an initial test. We used a sample of n = 889 citizens in Germany, roughly representative of the general population, and focused on climate anxiety as a facet of climate change related distress. We hypothesized that climate anxiety would be negatively correlated with mental wellbeing and that efficacy beliefs would mediate this relationship, showing positive associations with climate anxiety and with mental wellbeing – indicating a suppression effect. Correlation and regression analyses, in which we controlled for participants’ age, gender, socioeconomic status and prior climate change activism, supported these hypotheses. Future research should use longitudinal designs to further explore the assumed role of efficacy beliefs in coping with climate anxiety and preventing negative effects on mental wellbeing.

Climate anxiety has been found to correlate negatively with indicators of mental health. Thus, research is needed to shed light on effective coping strategies. This study investigates the role of efficacy beliefs in this context. It builds on a recent proposition according to which efficacy beliefs flow from climate anxiety as a form of motivated control to manage the emotional distress. It follows that climate anxiety and efficacy beliefs should be positively associated. The study tests the assumed positive association of climate anxiety and efficacy beliefs. It, furthermore, investigates whether efficacy beliefs flowing from climate anxiety are positively associated with mental wellbeing. A sample (N = 1000) representative of the population in Germany with regard to biological sex, age, household net income, education, and region will be used. The assumptions will be tested in a cross-sectional questionnaire study. Correlation and mediation analyses will be applied to test the hypotheses.