Exploring the relation between eco-anxiety and risk perception and their effect on pro-environmental behavior

Ecoanxiety refers to an experience of anxiety associated to environmental issues (e.g.: climate change, pollution, and ecological degradation). While it can lead to reactions of paralysis and apathy (Albrecht, 2011), it has been frequently linked to pro-environmental behaviour (both in the private domain of life and in support for climate policy and collective action; Ojala et al, 2021). Yet, less frequent is the research about the processes and variables underlying ecoanxiety and its association with pro-environmental behaviours.
While some studies proposed risk perception as a predictor of eco-anxiety (e.g., Hogg et al., 2023), our goal in the present studies is to explore the opposite relation. Drawing from the "risk as affect" approach (Slovic et al., 2007), we argue that affective reactions derived from eco-anxiety may act as a heuristic cue for risk appraisals, which in turn may lead to pro-environmental behaviour.
In two studies we investigated whether the perception of environmental risks mediated the relationship between eco-anxiety and pro-environmental behaviour. In Study 1 (N = 511), we explored the associations between the three variables using a crossectional design. Results supported the role of risk perception as mediator. Testing the previously proposed model, in which eco-anxiety would act as mediator between risk perception and pro-environmental behaviours showed no indirect effect of eco-anxiety in our data. Study 2 (N = 1325) explored eco-anxiety as a state (Pavani et al., 2023) and manipulated participant’s eco-anxiety to test whether experimentally induced eco-anxiety heightened risk perception and pro-environmental behaviour (decision to donate to environmental NGOs). Sequential mediation analyses evidenced the combined indirect effect of ecoanxiety state and risk perception on the relation between study condition (control; lower eco-anxiety; higher eco-anxiety) and donating to environmental NGOs. The results suggest that reactions produced by eco-anxiety may cue risk perception, which may act as mediator in the relation between eco-anxiety and pro-environmental behaviours.