Toward a unified understanding of climate anxiety: Examining measures of climate and eco-anxiety

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339562 December 29, 2025 16 / 19 could elucidate variance in climate activism and become increasingly relevant when climate health risks aggravate and become a greater mental health threat in the future. Before advancing future research, it is crucial to refine climate anxiety measures to prevent jangle fallacies and variance restrictions—starting with precise definitions that distinguish between emotional responses and impairments related to climate change and ensuring that refined measures are validated within their specific target groups. Acknowledgments PACE is a joint project of the University of Erfurt, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA), the Leibniz Institute of Psychology (ZPID), the Science Media Center (SMC), and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM). The authors are grateful to all members of the PACE team for conducting this joint project. Author contributions Conceptualization: Lisa Marie Hempel, Mattis Geiger, Cornelia Betsch. Data curation: Lisa Marie Hempel, Mattis Geiger. Formal analysis: Lisa Marie Hempel, Mattis Geiger. Funding acquisition: Cornelia Betsch. Methodology: Lisa Marie Hempel, Mattis Geiger. Project administration: Cornelia Betsch. Resources: Cornelia Betsch. Supervision: Mattis Geiger, Cornelia Betsch. Writing – original draft: Lisa Marie Hempel. Writing – review & editing: Lisa Marie Hempel, Mattis Geiger, Cornelia Betsch. References

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