Climate Change and Human Well-Being: Emotions, Perceptions, and Social Responses

Climate change is increasingly recognised not only as an environmental challenge but also as a social and psychological one. Across the world, individuals are exposed to concerns about extreme weather events, environmental degradation, uncertainty about the future, and perceived inadequacy of societal responses. These developments have generated scholarly interest in the emotional dimensions of climate change, including climate anxiety, fear, grief, guilt, hope, responsibility, and feelings of efficacy or powerlessness.

This session explores how climate-related perceptions and emotions shape human well-being, quality of life, and social action across different contexts. While concern about climate change can motivate engagement and collective action, it may also contribute to stress, despair, disengagement, or feelings of paralysis. Understanding these dynamics is essential for assessing the societal consequences of environmental change and for identifying conditions under which concern can be transformed into constructive responses.

The session invites theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions examining the relationship between climate change, emotions, well-being, and behaviour. Topics may include climate anxiety and mental health, environmental grief and loss, hope and resilience, trust and risk perception, social inequalities in climate-related experiences, environmental attitudes and values, climate communication, collective action, and cross-national differences in emotional responses to climate change. Contributions employing qualitative, quantitative, experimental, or comparative approaches are welcome.

By bringing together research from different regions and perspectives, the session seeks to advance understanding of climate change as a lived social experience and to contribute to broader debates on well-being and quality of life in an era of environmental uncertainty.