It is now widely accepted that we are in a climate emergency, and the number of people who are concerned about this problem is growing. Yet, qualitative, in-depth studies to investigate the emotional response to climate change were conducted either in high-income, western countries, or in low-income countries particularly vulnerable to climate change. To our knowledge, there are no qualitative studies conducted in countries that share great barriers to decarbonization while being significant contributors to carbon emissions. Since climate change affects people globally, it is crucial to study this topic in a variety of socio-political contexts. In this work, we discuss views and reflections voiced by highly concerned residents of Poland, a Central European country that is a major contributor to Europe's carbon emissions. We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews with Polish residents, who self-identified as concerned about climate change. A variety of emotions related to climate change were identified and placed in the context of four major themes: dangers posed by climate change, the inevitability of its consequences, attributions of responsibility, and commonality of concern. Our findings highlight a variety of often ambivalent and conflicting emotions that change along with the participant’s thoughts, experiences and behaviours. Furthermore, we describe a wide repertoire of coping strategies, which promoted well-being and sustained long-term engagement in climate action. As such, our work contributes to research on a broad array of climate-related emotions.

No abstract

There is a growing research interest in the affective aspects of climate change and their links with pro-climate engagement as well as with health and wellbeing. Yet, psychometrically valid instruments assessing the wide panorama of climate change emotions are limited. Here, we report on the development and validation of the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE), a self-report measure of multiple emotions experienced in relation to climate change. Based on qualitative exploration, literature review, along with expert and target population content validation, we formulated a large initial item pool. High psychometric quality of the ICE was secured in three quantitative studies conducted in samples from the general population in Poland. In Study 1, based on exploratory factor analysis, we indicate that the emotional experience of climate change can be viably captured by 8 underlying factors: anger, contempt, enthusiasm, powerlessness, guilt, isolation, anxiety, and sorrow. This structure was corroborated in Study 2 with confirmatory factor analysis on an independent sample. In Study 3, we estimated the repeatability of the ICE scores demonstrating that the ICE assesses moderately stable affective dispositions. Across studies, we provided evidence for the reliability and validity of the ICE in terms of internal consistency of the scales and convergent, discriminant and concurrent validity. We also showed the functionality of the ICE in the context of climate change mitigation and mental health. The ICE provides a novel integrative approach to climate change emotions, and it can be used to further the understanding of the complex role of emotions in planetary health.

Bodily sensations are one of the major building blocks of emotional experience. However, people differ in their ability to recognise and name their emotions, especially those in response to complex phenomena such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we investigated whether the bodily sensation maps (BSMs) approach can be employed to study emotions related to phenomena that are likely to evoke various, and perhaps even conflicting, emotions in people. Using a unique topographical self-report method—the previously established emBODY tool, 548 participants marked where in the body they feel sensations (activations and deactivations) when they experience distinct emotions (e.g. happiness) and when they think about different phenomena, namely climate change, COVID-19 pandemic, war, nature, friends, and summer holidays. We revealed maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions and phenomena. Importantly, each phenomenon was related to a statistically unique BSM, suggesting that participants were able to differentiate between feelings associated with distinct phenomena. Yet, we also found that BSMs of phenomena showed some similarity with maps of emotions. Together, these findings indicate that the emBODY tool might be useful in uncovering the range of emotions individuals experience towards complex phenomena.