Climate anxiety, pro-environmental behavior, and perceived barriers in university students: analysis of a publicly available dataset from the United States.

Introduction: Climate change anxiety is increasingly recognized as an important psychological response to the climate crisis among young adults, but its link to climate-related behaviors remains unclear. Methods: Using the four-factor Climate Anxiety Scale (CAS), this secondary analysis of a public dataset examined whether cognitive-emotional difficulties, functional impairment, personal experience with climate change, and behavioral engagement predicted pro-environmental behavior (PEB) and perceived barriers to climate action in a sample of American university students ( Results: Both Poisson models were significant [PEB: LR Discussion: Together, these findings suggest that it is the behavioral and motivational components of the CAS, rather than climate anxiety as a global construct, that are most consistently associated with PEB and barrier awareness. By contrast, the distress-related dimensions showed little independent association with either outcome apart from a small model-dependent association between Cognitive-Emotional Difficulties and PEB in the binomial sensitivity analyses. These findings underscore the value of treating climate anxiety as a multidimensional construct in research and intervention efforts aimed at translating climate concern into sustained action.