Climate change knowledge is associated with greater worry but less anxiety about climate change

As climate change increasingly threatens human health and well-being, a growing number of individuals experience climate change anxiety. Whereas the role of certain personal characteristics, such as environmental attitudes, in climate change anxiety is well established, the association between climate change knowledge and climate change anxiety is currently not well understood, and previous studies produced mixed findings. The present study examines the unique associations between climate change knowledge and both climate change anxiety and climate change worry at the between- and within-person levels of analysis.

We analyzed four waves of data collected across nine months from 1,152 adults in Germany using mixed-effects models. Climate change knowledge was assessed using two validated tests.

At the between-person level, climate change knowledge was positively associated with climate change worry but negatively associated with climate change anxiety. These associations were consistent across both knowledge tests and both subdimensions of climate change anxiety. At the within-person level, no significant associations emerged, except for a positive association between climate change knowledge and climate change worry for one of the two knowledge tests.

These findings help reconcile previous inconsistent results by indicating that greater climate change knowledge may foster adaptive worry while simultaneously mitigating more clinical and impairing forms of climate change anxiety.