Unveiling Climate Anxiety: Psychometric analysis and conceptual clarification of the psychological impacts of climate change in diverse communities

The impact of climate change and socio-environmental disasters can have a psychological dimension, producing a set of concerns and anxieties called Climate Anxiety. This article sought to understand this phenomenon from a qualitative and quantitative approach. We present the translation, cultural adaptation, and validation of the Climate Anxiety Scale, an instrument that presents good internal reliability (α = 0.883). We replicated the factorial structure of the original instrument (RMSEA = 0.075, 90%CI [0.066; 0.084]), suggesting a four-factor structure: Cognitive and Emotional Impairment, Functional Impairment, Experiences of Climate Change, and Behavioral Engagement. However, there is evidence of convergent and discriminant validity only for the factors Cognitive and Emotional Impairment and Functional Impairment. Individuals living on indigenous land, in rural areas, or in quilombola communities had higher Climate Anxiety scores and sub-scores in all factors (d ranging from 0.434 to 1.267), except for Cognitive and Emotional Impairment (d = 0.098). We found a positive correlation between the Behavioral Engagement factor and all factors of the Ecological Behavior Scale (R ranging from 0.369 to 0.559); the Cognitive and Emotional Impairment and Functional Impairment factors only showed positive correlations with the Activism-Consumption and Recycling factors (R ranging from 0.198 to 0.299); and the Experience of Climate Change Impacts factor correlated with the Activism-Consumption (R = 0.235) and Urban Cleaning (R = 0.159) factors. Finally, we observed that, when asked to reflect on their emotions, cognitions, and thoughts related to climate change in a qualitative study, participants reported existential themes related to ontological insecurity, spatiality, relationality, and freedom-responsibility. Taken together, the results of the quantitative and qualitative studies point to the complexity of the Climate Anxiety construct, beyond a mere dimension of psychological distress, being interpreted as a multifaceted emotion that can mobilize processes of change and behavioral engagement even when producing negative feelings.