Panic internally, act sustainably: Climate change distress predicts pro-environmental behavior in a modified work for environmental protection task and a dictator game

The negative impact of climate change on mental health has gained increased attention in recent years, with studies documenting elevated rates of mental disorders in areas affected by natural disasters. At the same time, anxiety or distress over climate change have been described as natural responses to an existential threat that is not per se pathological. Climate change distress (CCD) may even be a motivating force for pro-environmental behavior (PEB) and ultimately help mitigate the effects of climate change. In the present study, we tested a number or pre-registered hypotheses (https://osf.io/jqb58) on the association between CCD and PEB in an online sample of 550 German-speaking participants. We assessed PEB at a behavioral level using a modified work-for-environmental-protection-task and a modified dictator game, and measured CCD and climate change-associated impairment (CCI) via self-report. Additionally, we investigated participant age and gender as moderators of the CCD-PEB association (data and code available at https://osf.io/eprdw/). In a series of regression analyses, we observed that CCD was linearly associated with a higher level of PEB in both paradigms, such that individuals who were more distressed were more likely to complete a working memory task to generate donations or sacrifice their own payoff in the dictator game to donate to environmental protection organizations. As predicted, younger individuals and women (vs. men) experienced higher levels of both CCD and CCI. Contrary to hypotheses, age and gender did not moderate the CCD-PEB association. We discuss the high prevalence of CCD in the sample and lay out directions for future work to assess avenues for increasing PEB whilst protecting climate-related mental health.