2023

Author(s): Mathé M, Grisetto F, Gauvrit N, Roger C

Environment-related anxiety is becoming an important and increasingly widespread emotional response to ecological crises. This phenomenon presents new challenges in terms of public health as it can lead to cognitive, emotional, and functional impairments in daily life. These impairments are measured by the Climate Change Anxiety Scale (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020), the only tool validated in French that assesses climate anxiety. However, eco-anxiety, which encompasses more than climate anxiety, may affect an individual's inner life without causing pathological impairments in their daily life. Consequently, new tools for assessing eco-anxiety at a nonpathological level in French-speaking populations are required. The goal of this study was to translate and validate the Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale (HEAS; Hogg et al., 2021) in French (HEAS-FR) and analyse its psychometric properties based on responses from 275 French-speaking adults. The HEAS is a self-report measure specifically designed to assess psychological responses to climate change and ecological issues. The confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four-factor structure of the original English version. Cronbach's alphas indicated fair-to-good internal consistency for all four HEAS-FR subscales. Its convergent validity was established by examining correlations with questionnaires assessing related constructs, including climate change anxiety, anxiety, stress, depression, and environmental identity. The results revealed globally moderate-to-strong positive correlations between the HEAS-FR subscales and all questionnaires, indicating good convergent validity. Therefore, HEAS-FR was found to be suitable for assessing the four dimensions of eco-anxiety proposed by Hogg et al. (2021) in French-speaking populations.

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cbs0000398