TY - JOUR
T1 - Nature Connectedness in the Climate Change Context
T2 - Implications for Climate Action and Mental Health
AU - Curll, Sonia L.
AU - Stanley, Samantha K.
AU - Brown, Patricia M.
AU - O’Brien, Léan V.
N1 - Funding Information:
Data collection was funded by the Research School of Psychology at the Australian National University. Sonia L. Curll acknowledges scholarship support from the Commonwealth Government of Australia. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. We thank Zoe Leviston and Professor IainWalker for their contributions to data collection and support for this article. Data and syntax are available on theOpen Science Framework (https://osf.io/98tzw)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association
PY - 2022/5/12
Y1 - 2022/5/12
N2 - A sense of psychological connectedness with the natural world has important benefits for global health. In a time of environmental crisis, however, it may also be accompanied by mental health risks. We used national survey data collected after a severe Australian bushfire season (N = 3,875) to test a path model of the relationships between nature connectedness, worry about climate change, individual and collective climate action, and psychological distress (depression, anxiety, stress). We found that nature connectedness was positively associated with climate worry that, in turn, was positively associated with climate action and psychological distress. Whereas taking individual climate action was associated with reduced psychological distress, taking collective climate action had the opposite effect. Our findings provide new insights into potential processes underlying the association between nature connectedness and mental health in the climate change context and point to an urgent need to protect the well-being of people engaging in collective climate action
AB - A sense of psychological connectedness with the natural world has important benefits for global health. In a time of environmental crisis, however, it may also be accompanied by mental health risks. We used national survey data collected after a severe Australian bushfire season (N = 3,875) to test a path model of the relationships between nature connectedness, worry about climate change, individual and collective climate action, and psychological distress (depression, anxiety, stress). We found that nature connectedness was positively associated with climate worry that, in turn, was positively associated with climate action and psychological distress. Whereas taking individual climate action was associated with reduced psychological distress, taking collective climate action had the opposite effect. Our findings provide new insights into potential processes underlying the association between nature connectedness and mental health in the climate change context and point to an urgent need to protect the well-being of people engaging in collective climate action
KW - Climate change
KW - Climate worry
KW - Nature connectedness
KW - Pro-environmental behavior
KW - Psychological distress
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85130776939&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/tps0000329
DO - 10.1037/tps0000329
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85130776939
SN - 2332-2136
VL - 8
SP - 448
EP - 460
JO - Translational Issues in Psychological Science
JF - Translational Issues in Psychological Science
IS - 4
ER -
