What Drives Climate Action in Canada’s Provincial North? Exploring the Role of Connectedness to Nature, Climate Worry, and Talking with Friends and Family

Abstract

Despite widespread calls to action from the scientific community and beyond, a concerning climate action gap exists. This paper aims to enhance our understanding of the role of connectedness to nature in promoting individual-level climate action in a unique setting where climate research and action are lacking: Canada’s Provincial North. To begin to understand possible pathways, we also examined whether climate worry and talking about climate change with family and friends mediate the relationship between connectedness to nature and climate action. We used data collected via postal surveys in two Provincial North communities, Thunder Bay (Ontario), and Prince George (British Columbia) (n = 628). Results show that connectedness to nature has a direct positive association with individual-level climate action, controlling for gender and education. Results of parallel mediation analyses further show that connectedness to nature is indirectly associated with individual-level climate action, mediated by both climate worry and talking about climate change with family and friends. Finally, results suggest that climate worry and talking about climate change with family and friends serially mediate the relationship between connectedness to nature and with individual-level climate action. These findings are relevant for climate change engagement and action, especially across Canada’s Provincial North, but also in similar settings characterized by marginalization, heightened vulnerability to climate change, urban islands within vast rural and remote landscapes, and economies and social identities tied to resource extraction. Drawing on these findings, we argue that cultivating stronger connections with nature in the places where people live, learn, work, and play is an important and currently underutilized leverage point for promoting individual-level climate action. This study therefore adds to the current and increasingly relevant calls for (re-)connecting with nature that have been made by others across a range of disciplinary and sectoral divides.

How do children, adolescents, and young adults relate to climate change? Implications for developmental psychology

“…Regarding predictors of private-sphere pro-environmental behaviour among young people, climate-change worry is one factor that is consistently positively related to being more engaged (Galway et al, 2021; for a review, see Ojala et al, 2021;Sanson et al, 2019). One mediating factor in this relationship is problem-focused coping, where people cope by focusing on the problem and searching for information (Ojala, 2012b).…”

Exploring Climate Emotions in Canada’s Provincial North

“…This divergence from existing scholarship on climate emotions could be due, in part, to the fact that our sample only included adults aged 18 and up; therefore, the experiences of youth and children are not captured in our data. This divergence could also be explained, in part, by the strong connectedness to land and nature that is common and characterizes the Provincial North (Galway et al, 2021), which likely enhances experiences of emotional distress in relation to climate change and increases with age and living in a particular community for a long period (which is the case for our sample). However, our results regarding age are in line with Wullenkord et al (2021) who found no bivariate correlation between age and climate anxiety specifically.…”

“…The postal surveys were implemented in two communities within the regional case-study setting: Thunder Bay (Northern Ontario) and Prince George (Northern British Columbia). See Galway et al (2021) for a more complete description of these two communities. This paper uses the data collected via these postal surveys to explore and enhance understanding of climate emotions in the context of Canada's Provincial North.…”

“…The emerging climate emotions literature reflects the longoverdue recognition that emotions are related to climate change in several important ways (Ray, 2020). Specifically, there is growing evidence illustrating that climate emotions can impact mental health and well-being, are connected to climate action and resilience, and should be considered in climate change communication, education, and engagement efforts (Wang et al, 2018;Bouman et al, 2020;Ray, 2020;Galway et al, 2021;Pihkala, 2022a). The emerging literature is also illustrative of an "affective turn" (Clough and Halley, 2007) concerning climate change.…”

No risk, no fun…ctioning? Perceived climate risks, but not nature connectedness or self-efficacy predict climate anxiety

“…It may also influence perception of already existing degradation of nature due to climate change, which may exacerbate feelings of climate anxiety. These conceptual thoughts are mirrored in tentative evidence for a positive relationship of nature connectedness with climate worry (17,18) and climate anxiety (12). The existing studies operationalized nature connectedness as a partially cognitive construct, rather than as the affective construct that Mayer and Frantz propose.…”