Should we worry about the climate? An exploration of climate coping, experientialavoidance and climate friendly behaviour among adolescents

Abstract: Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing the world, connected to rising oceanlevels, droughts, and other natural disasters. The aim of this study was to explore if and howclimate worry, climate coping and experiential avoidance are connected to climate friendlybehaviour among Swedish adolescents in their third year of upper-secondary school (N=470).A questionnaire was used to measure the factors of interest, which were analysed withcorrelation and mediation analysis. Four main results were found. The first was that climatefriendly behaviour related to climate worry and climate coping in a similar way to howpro-environmental behaviour has done in previous studies. The second finding was thatproblem focused climate coping mediated the relationship between meaning focused climatecoping and climate friendly behaviour. The third result was that distancing was positivelyrelated to experiential avoidance and climate worry in contrast to de-emphasizing which wasonly related negatively to climate friendly behaviour. Lastly the results showed thatexperiential avoidance was related to distancing but not to any other variables. Our findingscontribute to a greater understanding of the field in that they support and extend previousfindings as well as highlight new angles for future research.