Understanding the Impacts of Climate Anxiety on Financial Decision Making

Abstract

Previous studies have identified harmful social, physical and mental impacts due to climate change. Anxiety due to climate change or “climate anxiety” may be an adaptive reasonable response to a real threat; however, it may also be associated with considerable functional impairment of associated behaviours. In this study, we examined the relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment financial decisions. Discrete choice experiments are required to make various choices with different attributes and levels, allowing us to understand the importance of different factors within these choices. We found that a moderate level of climate anxiety may be optimal for making pro-environmental choices, with this group having significantly higher consideration of sustainable investment options than participants in the low or high climate anxiety groups. We also found that, for participants with moderate levels of climate anxiety, there was no significant difference in the importance of financially focused attributes (risk, return on investment or length of investment) and sustainability, indicating it as a primary consideration in these decisions. Using a novel experimental approach to this problem, these findings are significant as they allow us to further examine choices to understand not only frequency of pro-environmental behaviours, but trade-offs participants made. This study provides evidence for the use of DCE when examining pro-environment behaviours, as they may be more robust to socially desirable response bias, compared to self-report survey measures.

1. Introduction

Climate change has become an urgent topic of global concern, with increased public awareness driven by a multitude of scientific reports and media coverage. Organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have released extensive data documenting the accelerating impacts of global warming, including rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and loss of biodiversity. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report [1,2] indicated that exposure to climate events have a wide range of observed and detrimental impacts on mental health and overall well-being, due to factors linked to extreme weather events such as displacement or undernutrition. It was also suggested that climatic exposure has vicarious impacts, by simply observing how climate change may be impacting others or learning about climate change people have experienced decreases in mental health. Distress due to climate change or the environment was further examined through public opinion surveys which consistently show that people are more concerned than ever about the future of the planet, with environmental issues now perceived as a top priority and major source of stress for some individuals [3,4,5,6]. These negative reactions have had growing recognition on a global scale, primarily as climate anxiety, referring to fears related to climate change, or eco-anxiety, referring broadly to ecological disaster. Although eco-anxiety covers a broader context than climate anxiety, these terms are often used interchangeably due to climate change and environmental crisis sharing many common features [7].

Occurrences of climate anxiety have become increasingly common globally [8,9,10]. Climate anxiety has been linked to mental health outcomes such as psychological distress, stress, depression and generalised anxiety, with these outcomes being examined across the lifespan [11,12]. These findings outline the burden that fears and other negative feelings about climate change may have on individuals and mental health services, especially when considering that indirect or vicarious exposure may illicit these reactions.

Concerns about climate change may have practical implications, particularly when examining environmental decision making. This may be seen when individuals become more aware of potential negative outcomes associated with climate change, they may feel compelled to consider more environmentally friendly or pro-environment behaviours [13,14]. However, the practicality of addressing climate concerns by changing decisions in everyday behaviours may vary widely based on personal, social and economic factors. For some, reducing their carbon footprint by adopting renewable energy, reducing waste or altering transportation habits may be feasible; however, systemic barriers, such as financial constraints or limited access to eco-friendly options, may make these actions less attainable [15].

It has been previously argued by Verplanken and Roy [13] that fear related to climate change is an adaptive response. They demonstrated a positive relationship between habitual ecological worry and pro-environmental behaviours and pro-environmental attitudes. However, similar studies have since reported conflicting findings, with some finding no relationship between similar constructs, such as eco or climate anxiety, and pro-environment behaviours [16,17]. However, Stanley et al., ref. [18] found no relationship between eco-anxiety and individual pro-environmental action, and a negative relationship between eco-anxiety and collective pro-environmental action. Whereas others found that moderate levels may be optimal for pro-environment behaviours, with high levels becoming debilitating, reducing pro-environment behaviours [19,20]. This inverted-U relationship may be understood in the context of established psychological theories, where moderate levels of stress or arousal are associated with peak performance, while both low and high levels can impair function [19]. It is also possible that habitual worry regarding climate change may be unconstructive/maladaptive for some, but for others may be a constructive/adaptive response that increases pro-environment behaviours [21]. These findings indicate that this relationship may be more complex than initially thought.

While climate anxiety is a significant driver of pro-environmental behaviours, other factors, such as altruism, may also play a role in people’s engagement in pro-environment behaviours. Altruism, which is often defined as selfless concern for the well-being of others, can motivate individuals to act in ways that benefit society and the environment, even when these actions come at a personal cost [22,23]. For example, people may choose to donate to environmental organisations, support policies that address climate change or adopt sustainable practices in their daily lives out of a sense of responsibility to future generations, without consideration of any personal benefit. Findings from Knez [24] indicate that engagement in pro-environment behaviours may be a considerably different issue depending on individuals, with altruistic individuals, individuals who rated “high” on altruism, considering these behaviours to be a “moral issue”, whereas this was not the case for egoistic individuals, individuals who rated “high” on egoism. These findings were further examined by Kim and Stepchenkova [25], who identified how altruistic attitudes, altruistic values and environmental knowledge play an important role in pro-environmental behaviours among tourists, finding a positive relationship.

Attitudes and values may be important to consider when attempting to understand how people may make pro-environment behaviours; however, these behaviours often involve various trade-offs, such as sacrificing convenience or incurring additional costs for other benefits. Gaining insight into which features are most important to people, and what people are willing to trade-off, when making these choices may be beneficial in making different options more appealing; for example, pro-environmental options. By understanding the factors that influence decisions, such as stakeholders preferring low-cost options, policymakers can design interventions that encourage sustainable practices. For example, reducing the cost of pro-environmental transport and subsidising these modes of transport may make them more appealing to consumers, while reducing tax on earnings from sustainable investment options may encourage further investment.

Financial decisions and their relationship to climate anxiety represent a critical yet understudied area within pro-environmental behaviours. In Australia, where superannuation is a mandatory retirement savings system, individuals can opt into different types of investment options, such as riskier options, or a focus on domestic investments. However, many people default to conventional investment options due to a lack of awareness of choices or perceived complexity in engaging with these choices [26,27,28]. Understanding the factors that influence financial decision making is essential for promoting investments of a sustainable or more environmentally friendly nature. Research suggests that financial decisions are often guided by attributes such as risk, return on investment and duration, with other considerations, such as sustainability of investment, playing a secondary role [29,30,31]. This highlights the importance of understanding trade-offs people may make with these decisions to better incentivise investment in sustainable options. By making eco-friendly investment options more transparent and appealing, financial institutions can empower individuals to align their investments with their environmental values [32,33,34].

Previous research examining the relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours have primarily used self-report measures examining intentions of behaviours; however, these measures may limit our understanding of the choices people make. What makes an option appealing, whether it be consumer choices or financial decisions, can be difficult to grasp as this often differs on an individual basis. Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) allow us to further explore what attributes of a product or choice are important to people by simulating choices people may have to make in everyday life, such as deciding what phone they should buy by considering attributes of the product (screen size, battery life, etc.) at varying levels. This allows us to examine factors involved in individuals’ decision-making processes, providing insight into the importance of these attributes and how we may make a specific choice more desirable. For example, pro-environment options could be made more cost effective if people are primarily focused on cost. For a review of DCE methods, see Louviere et al. [35]. DCE methods have been previously used to measure choices related to health, food and transportation [36,37,38,39,40,41]. In the present study, we are utilising DCE methods to understand how people make financial decisions, and how these decisions may be influenced by climate anxiety. Decisions were intended to simulate common decisions people may make for retirement planning, such as in Australia Superannuation (Figure 1). Behaviours examined through DCE have been found to be externally valid, with a systematic review by Quaife et al. [38] finding that DCEs reasonably predict health-related behaviours.

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between climate anxiety and financial decision making. This study aimed to replicate previous findings, in which we examined that moderate levels were related to higher levels of pro-environment behaviours, with a financially focused DCE, rather than transport focused [19]. Thus, hypothesis 1 proposes that we will find an inverted U relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours. Hypothesis 2: we will find that financially focused factors (risk, length of investment, return on investment) are of significantly higher importance to participants than whether it is eco-friendly or of altruistic nature, with the altruism attribute being least important. Hypothesis 3: we will find that pro-environment behaviours are related to self-reported altruism.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Climate Change and Mental Health

The psychological consequences of climate change have seen increasing attention in both research and public awareness. Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have highlighted how climate-related events such as displacement, undernutrition and extreme weather are linked to deteriorating mental health outcomes [1,2]. Beyond direct experiences, even indirect or vicarious exposure (for example, through peers or media) to climate information has been associated with increased psychological distress and reduced well-being. Terms such as climate anxiety and eco-anxiety have emerged to describe the intense fear and concern some individuals feel about climate change and other environmental events causing ecological disruption [3,4,5,6,7]. While eco-anxiety is often defined as concerns for broad ecological disruptions, it is often used interchangeable with climate anxiety, referring to environmental concerns because of climate change, due to their overlapping features [7].

2.2. Climate Anxiety and Behavioural Responses

Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between climate anxiety and negative mental health outcomes such as depression, generalised anxiety, and stress [8,9,10,11,12]. Although previous research has examined maladaptive links to psychological distress, it has often been discussed how these emotional reactions can lead to adaptive behaviours [13,14,21]. These studies have suggested that concern involving climate change, in the form of climate anxiety, motivates individuals to act in a pro-environmental manner. However, these findings have been mixed with others examining no significant relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours [16,17,18], or a non-linear inverted-U shaped relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours, with moderate levels potentially being optimal for pro-environmental action [19,20].

2.3. The Role of Altruism in Pro-Environment Behaviours

Altruism, defined as selfless concern for the well-being of others, has been identified as another important driver of pro-environment behaviours [22,23]. Altruistic individuals may engage in sustainable practices not for personal gain, but rather due to feelings of moral responsibility. Previous research has examined that altruistic values, combined with environmental knowledge, can significantly influence behavioural choices, particularly in tourism and consumer contexts [24,25]. These findings identify that motivators, such as altruism, may influence pro-environment behaviours.

2.4. Trade-Offs and Decision Making in Pro-Environment Behaviours

Understanding how people make environmentally focused decisions often involves examining what features are most important when making these decisions, and trade-offs, allowing us to understand the relationship between cost, convenience and other features which may be present in any given decision. While attitudes and values play an important role in these decisions, real-world behaviours are often constrained by financial resources or access to alternative options [15]. By identifying factors that individuals may prioritise or trade-offs they are willing to accept, we can design and promote pro-environment options to be more accessible and appealing for a wider range of individuals.

2.5. Discrete Choice Experiments and Pro-Environment Preferences

To address the complexity of choices, more specifically environmentally focused choices, Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE) can be used to examine what features are most important to people when they make these decisions. DCE simulate real-world decisions using varying attributes and levels, to allow us to understand how people may prioritise different factors, such as cost, and what they may be willing to forgo for a reduction in cost (Figure 1) [35,36,37,38,39,40,41]. DCE have been previously used to examine preferences in various consumer choice domains, such as health, food and transport, and may allow us to examine how other factors, such as climate anxiety and altruism, may influence people’s financial decisions.

2.6. Financial Decisions as Pro-Environment Behaviolurs

Financial decisions are often used to understand how primary factors such as risk tolerance, investment horizon, and return on investment drive investment choices [29,43,44,45,46]. However, in recent years, there has been growing recognition that financial behaviours can also serve as important expressions of moral values [47,48]. Investment choices may allow individuals to support or reject industries based on various factors, such as their environmental impacts.

Sustainable investing, which includes practices such as environmental, social and governance investing, impact investing, and socially responsible investing may allow individuals to tailor their investment focus in ways that are consistent with their pro-environment attitudes [49]. For example, by selecting green investment options or divesting from fossil fuel companies, even when these decisions involve trade-offs such as potentially lower return on investment or increased risk. These choices can be examined to understand how important these factors may be for individuals. In some cases, these factors, which are often referred to as secondary factors, may become primary focuses when considering investment options [31,32,33].

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Participants

A total of 394 participants completed the study; 203 general population participants were recruited via Prolific Academic, and 191 participants were recruited through the university’s undergraduate student research participation pool. Prolific Academic is an online recruitment platform where participants are paid a general payrate for their participation, based on estimated length of the task. Students who participated were compensated with course credit, while participants recruited through Prolific’s online marketplace were paid a general pay rate of $4 AUD for completion. Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to participation. The study was approved by the University ethics committee (approval number: H-2022-0136). Requirements for sample size were calculated using methods described by de Bekker-Grob et al., ref. [50] using pilot data, which was determined to be 250 participants. Data collection occurred from May 2024 to October 2024.

3.2. Survey Administration and Informed Consent

The following was administered on QuestionPro online survey software (Interface Version v1). Prior to starting the survey, participants were required to read the study information statement and provide informed consent [51].

3.3. Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE)

Our DCE was developed to determine the importance of different factors (or attributes) when making financial decisions, such as investments. To achieve this, we constructed a 5 (attributes: risk, length of investment, return on investment, sustainability of investment, charitable donation included in investment) × 4 (levels: very low/low/medium/high, 7/6.3/4/3%, 2/4/6/8 years, 0/33/66/100%, 0/2/4/6%) (Figure 2). These decisions required participants to consider the importance of each attribute as they will have to regularly make trade-offs; for example, focusing on sustainable investments may result in less return on investment. Our DCE design allowed us to understand the utility of making pro-environment choices, using multiple levels of sustainability. Each participant completed 35 choice tasks, randomly drawn from a larger matrix of possible discrete choice scenarios. This number of trials was chosen to avoid decision fatigue in participants and was used in our power analysis to calculate sample size requirements. Four dominant trials were used as attention checks at the same points for all participants throughout the task; these trials were not included in the analysis of participants’ utility scores.

Participants were provided with this preamble: “Welcome to the financial decision-making task. In this task, you will be presented with various investment options and asked to choose the one that aligns best with your investment preferences. Each choice will require you to select one option out of two, considering several key factors associated with financial decisions.

The factors to consider include:

• Risk: The level of risk involved in the investment.
• Return on Investment (ROI): The potential financial return from the investment.
• Investment Duration: The length of time you are required to commit to the investment.
• Charitable Donations: Whether the investment includes contributions to charitable causes.
• Sustainability: The extent to which the investment focuses on sustainable options, such as investments in renewable energy.

Please carefully evaluate each set of options and choose the one that best reflects your preferences. Your responses will help us understand your investment priorities and preferences.

3.4. Climate Change Anxiety Scale (CCAS)

The CCAS, developed by Clayton and Karazsia [16], is a four factor, 22-item measure. For this study we have used two factors aggregated as a single score (13 items) as a unidimensional measure of climate anxiety, with 8 items examining cognitive-emotional impairment due to worries about climate change and 5 items examining functional impairment due to worries about climate change, as previous research has found this model to have a better fit than a two-factor model or original four-factor model [52]. Scores from these two factors are aggregated as a single climate change anxiety score [52]. We have additionally used factor 2 from the original scale (4 items) to examine self-report pro-environment behaviours. Frequency ratings were made by participants on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = Never, 1 = Rarely, 2 = Sometimes, 3 = Often, 4 = Almost Always). The CCAS has high internal reliability, and good discriminant, divergent, convergent and structural validity [16,52].

3.5. Generative Altruism Scale (GAlS)

The GAlS is an 11-item measure of generative altruism. The GAlS includes affective and behavioural elements, in which altruism is operationalised as an attitude and commitment to help and care for others without expecting rewards or benefits; in this case, altruism is intrinsically motivated by compassion [53]. Frequency ratings were made by participants on a 4-point Likert scale (0 = Never, 1 = Sometimes, 2 = Often, 3 = Very Often), with total scores ranging from 0 to 33. Higher scores indicate the individual reported higher altruism. The measure has been shown to have good levels of internal consistency and had moderate correlations with related factors such as compassion/generosity and ideal to help others [53,54].

3.6. Data Preparation and Statistical Analysis

All self-report scales were scored and prepared for analysis using R; analysis was conducted using R 4.3.0 [55]. Twenty-one participants were removed due to having incomplete data (i.e., not completing all mandatory items). Attribute utility scores were calculated using a random-parameters logit (RPL) model; this involved participants’ choices being regressed against characteristics of the alternative transport options presented. The regression used a cumulative logit link function. This is psychologically equivalent to assuming that preferences are internal random variables (“utility”), and that people make decisions by comparing these preferences against fixed thresholds. The regression analysis estimates how much the average preference changes with changes in the attribute levels, allowing us to generate utility scores for each attribute. These utility coefficients were estimated separately for each person, and for each attribute, and they indicate the impact of changes in these attribute levels on transport choices. Length of investment utility is reverse scored, rather representing a preference for shorter term investments. For example, a participant may have utility scores 0.5; this would indicate that a participant was primarily focused on shorter term investments, when compared to a participant with a utility score of −0.5, which would indicate a participant was primarily focused on longer term investments. Estimation of utility parameters from choice data was carried out using the R language and its ‘ordinal’ package [55,56]. We categorised participants into climate anxiety groups based on tertile splits of the sample, with participants reporting 0–3 on the CCAS categorised as low, 4–9 categorised as moderate and >9 categorised as high climate anxiety.

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Data

The final sample included 373 participants aged between 18 and 64 years old (M = 27.06, SD = 9.542). This included 154 male participants, 213 female participants, 5 non-binary participants and 1 participant who responded “other/prefer not to say”. 203 participants were recruited from prolific academic, and 170 participants were recruited from the university’s undergraduate psychology programme. Participants who responded with non-binary or “other/prefer not to say” were excluded from analysis examining differences in gender due to a lack of representative sample, these participants were included for all other analyses.

Descriptive statistics were also calculated for the Climate Change Anxiety Score and Self-Report Altruism scale. The CCAS had scores ranging from 0 to 40 in our sample (M = 7.82, SD = 7.53). Self-report altruism scores ranged from 0 to 32 (M = 13.20, SD = 5.40).

4.2. Climate Anxiety and Attribute Utility Scores

We first examined differences in participants’ eco-trait utility based on level of climate anxiety, using a one-way ANOVA with planned post hoc analysis using Bonferroni corrections. There was a significant difference between groups’ eco-trait utility, F (2370) = 26.987, p < 0.001. Planned post hoc analysis found that those in moderate climate anxiety group had significantly higher eco-utility scores than both participants in low (t (371) = 7.207, p < 0.001) and high (t (371) = 4.942, p < 0.001), with no significant difference examined between high and low climate anxiety groups (Figure 3).

Utilising a polynomial regression with intercept, linear and quadratic terms, we examined the relationship between climate anxiety (CCAS) and pro-environment behaviours (eco-utility). A significant negative quadratic effect was found between participants’ CCAS score and eco-trait utility. This can be seen as the linear term for CCAS was positive and statistically significant (b = 0.025, t = 2.881, p = 0.004), suggesting that eco-trait utility initially increases with higher values of CCAS; however, the quadratic term was negative and also statistically significant (b = −0.000876, t = −2.764, p = 0.006), indicating a turning point of 14 where eco-trait utility begins to decrease.

4.3. Importance of Different Attributes in Financial Decision

We then examined the influence of each attribute within our DCE on participants’ decision making. We did this by using a repeated measures ANOVA to look at the differences between the utility of each attribute. There was a significant main effect of attribute utility score (F (41,488) = 120.09, p < 0.001), which we further explored through post hoc analysis. We found that utility scores for Risk of Investment were the highest (M = 0.67, SD = 0.61), followed by Return on Investment (M = 0.57, SD = 0.52), then Length of Investment (M = 0.53, SD = 0.58), then Eco-Friendly Rating (M = 0.27, SD = 0.47), with Altruism having the lowest utility (M = −0.023, SD = 0.29). These findings indicate that monetarily focused attributes were prioritised over other attributes. All comparisons, excluding Return on Investment and Length of Investment, were significant (Appendix A) (Figure 4).

We then examined differences in attribute utility based on the climate anxiety group. Through this analysis, we found a significant interaction effect between the climate anxiety group and attribute utility scores (F (81,480) = 6.043, p < 0.001). Post hoc analysis found that, for the moderate climate anxiety group, there was no significant difference in their eco-friendly utility and their three financially focused utility scores (Risk, Length of Investment and Return on Investment) (p = 1.00) (Appendix B) (Figure 5).

We then examined gender as a between subjects’ factor and its effect on attribute utilities. A significant main effect of gender was found (F (3369) = 3.488, p = 0.016), we also found a significant interaction effect between gender and attribute utility scores (F (121,476) = 3.921, p < 0.001). Post hoc analyses revealed that female participants had significantly lower attribute utility scores for Length of Investment (p = 0.007) and Return on Investment (p < 0.001) than male participants; however, they had significantly higher Eco-Friendly utility scores (p = 0.022). These findings indicate that female participants made monetary trade-offs to prioritise eco-friendly options when compared to male participants. Additionally, we also found that female participants had lower risk utility (M = 0.617, SD = 0.642) than males (M = 0.76, SD = 0.58), though these differences were not significant (Appendix C) (Figure 6).

4.4. Self-Report Altruism and Pro-Environment Behaviours

We then examined the relationship between self-reported altruism and pro-environment behaviours and found a positive relationship between altruism and both self-reported pro-environment behaviours (r = 0.329, p < 0.001) and pro-environment attribute utility (r = 0.191, p < 0.001). Although the much stronger relationship between the self-report measures may indicate an influence of social desirability on responses.

5. Discussion

This study investigated how climate anxiety and altruism influence people’s pro-environment decisions. Our DCE was developed to simulate various options people may have when investing in retirement funds (in Australia, Superannuation). This allowed us to examine trade-offs participants were willing to make when considering pro-environment choices and examine the frequency of these choices.

This study replicated findings of previous studies which used DCE to examine transport focused pro-environment behaviours using a financially focused DCE [19]. These findings provide further evidence of our previously observed inverted-U relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours [19]. This task found, in contrast to our previous task, that how eco-friendly an investment option was was not the most important factor when considering this choice. Previously, eco utility scores were examined to be the most important factor, between cost of travel, how expensive travel was and how eco-friendly travel was, when considering transport decisions. However, the previous study examined transport options using binary levels of eco-friendly (yes or no). This may give some indication of the increased complexity of this task; people may choose options with more tangible benefits, e.g., increased return on investment. These findings may provide insights into how to make sustainable options more appealing for people; more specifically, for people with low or high levels of climate anxiety. For example, making these choices less complex may encourage people to invest more sustainably.

5.1. Relationship Between Climate Anxiety and Pro-Environment Behaviours

The previous literature examining the relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours have reported conflicting findings, with some studies initially finding no relationship between these factors; however, more recent studies have found a positive relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours. We previously demonstrated that this relationship may be more complex, identifying that moderate levels of climate anxiety may be optimal for pro-environment behaviours, finding an inverted-U shaped relationship [19]. These findings supported ideas discussed by Verplanken et al. [21], outlining that, for some people, concerns of climate change may be adaptive, resulting in positive action (increased pro-environment behaviours); however, for others, this may be maladaptive in the form of habitual worry, resulting in distress regarding climate change and being debilitating in nature, reducing levels of pro-environment behaviours. These feelings of maladaptive anxiety have been identified to result in people who feel anxious but are unable to address problems appropriately due to anxious passivity [57,58]. It is important to note that previously, we had examined this relationship in a behavioural task aimed at simulating transport choices, with a replication of findings in this task simulating financial decisions, outlining that these findings may be related to other choices where pro-environment features may be considered.

5.2. Importance of Different Attributes in Financial Decisions

Through our analysis, we found that all the financial-focused attributes (risk, return on investment and length of investment) had significantly higher attribute utility than eco utility and altruism utility, with altruism having almost 0 utility. These findings indicate that, when people make financial choices within our task, financial-focused attributes were of significantly greater importance than other factors, with altruism having next to no consideration on average when people made these choices. These findings were not consistent with our prior study which also examined transport options, where we found that participants had significantly higher eco utility than cost or time. However, this may be due to the complexity of this task simply giving a binary yes/no option for whether an option was eco-friendly or not, compared to this task where people had to consider four levels of 5 attributes [19]. This is supported in our more recent study examining transport options where we gave participants more complex choices. In this study, we found that participants had lower eco utility than either time or cost, indicating that, with increased task complexity, the importance of pro-environment behaviour may also drop. Interestingly, when we examine attribute utility broken up by climate anxiety groups, we do find that, for participants with moderate levels of climate anxiety, there is not a significant difference in utility between eco utility, risk utility, return utility and length utility. These findings do indicate that, although there has been an increase in difficulty in decisions, participants with moderate levels of climate anxiety show a similar level of consideration for how eco-friendly an option was compared to its financial benefits.

5.3. Relationship Between Altruism and Pro-Environment Behaviours

Finally, we found a significant relationship between self-reported altruism and pro-environment behaviours, both self-reported and measured through our DCE. These findings are consistent with the previous literature indicating that pro-environment behaviours may be influenced by altruism [24,25]. However, although previous findings examining the relationship between altruism and pro-environment behaviours identify how altruism may be particularly relevant in addressing climate change, scepticism still exists surrounding altruistic traits, with previous research examining altruistic behaviours indicating that altruistic behaviours may have egoistic underlying motivation, indicating that this association may be linking pro social features rather than being truly altruistic [59,60,61,62]. Batson et al.’s [63] findings indicated that altruistic behaviours were encouraged by identifying a failure in helping previously, due to the pressure to help, rather than selflessness, driven by egoistic intentions. This scepticism of an altruistic trait may be further supported by findings of a lack of meaningful altruism utility in our DCE task, with responses of self-report altruism due to socially desirable response bias. These findings may indicate that the link between pro-environment behaviours and altruism, identified in the previous literature, may be primarily driven by the use of self-report measures on socially desirable traits, rather than some meaningful relationship. These findings are important to note as, when considering how to motivate people to make pro-environment behaviours, it is important to understand what factors may also be related to people making these choices; for example, focusing on individual benefits. These findings may add to understanding the relationship between pro-social factors and financial decisions. Previous research often found that pro-social behaviours can influence financial decisions, particularly in the contexts of ethical investing [64,65]. However, this often focuses on scenarios where pro-social behaviour is prominent or incentivised. However, our findings might suggest that, when people are not incentivised or self-oriented, pro-social preferences, such as pro-environment behaviours, may be greatly influenced based on individual-level factors, such as climate anxiety.

5.4. Strengths, Limitations and Future Directions

The use of DCE has allowed us to understand different factors related to financial decision making and how the importance of choices with sustainable options may be influenced by people’s level of climate anxiety. Through this replication of findings on the relationship between pro-environment behaviours and climate anxiety, we have outlined how similar experimental procedures may be utilised to further explore this relationship. Specifically, regarding our use of DCE for this study, we believe that our design closely simulated real-life decisions people may make regarding financial decisions, with some adjustments to better understand how factors, such as eco-friendliness and altruism, may influence these choices. This is important as DCEs that closely simulate real-life choices have been found to increase validity of results [66]. Another strength of our DCE task is the potential to reduce socially desirable response bias, as we examined in our DCE minimal consideration for altruism, which tends to be rated as a highly desirable trait [67]. This is important to consider when examining pro-environment behaviours which people may often feel pressured to respond in a socially desirable manner, impacting the external validity of behavioural measures in tasks examining features which are often regarded as being socially desirable [68,69].

The study design was limited by current definitions and measures of climate anxiety. Although there is currently quite a lot of discourse of factors that may be related to climate anxiety, whether climate anxiety may be state-based or trait-based, and definitions of climate anxiety, are still being debated [70]. However, we believe this does not impact the key take-away of this study that moderate levels of climate anxiety, or concern for climate change, may be optimal for pro-environmental action. Initially, the use of altruism in our DCE may reduce levels of external validity of the task, as this is often not a feature that is present when considering different superannuation options. Including a task with greater external validity could improve the understanding of people’s real-life decisions. Study findings may also be limited by a lack of incentives for participants; adequate incentives may influence the behaviour of participants to act closer to real behaviour and have been described as important for generalisability in experimental economics [71]. However, the introduction of incentives may have unexpected consequences for participants who are already highly motivated, with research indicating that rewards for these people may undermine their motivation, resulting in a reduction in observed behaviours [72]. The generalisability of the study’s findings is also limited by the use of a sample including university undergraduate students.

Future research may look at examining the relationship between climate anxiety and pro-environment behaviours in different types of decisions, such as consumer choice decisions. Future research should aim to examine what may be considered a high level of climate anxiety. Our research found, in our sample, that climate anxiety may be adaptive until a score of 14 before shifting to be maladaptive. Understanding at what point climate anxiety may become maladaptive may allow us to better understand distress associated with climate anxiety. Future research should also examine what may be influencing levels of climate anxiety; this may involve examining whether people who are overestimating the impacts of climate change may also become more distressed than people who have a better estimation of the impacts, whether this be due to increased knowledge or other factors. Finally, future research should aim to understand what factors may contribute to climate anxiety, as this understanding may enable programmes aimed at fostering a healthy or adaptive level of climate anxiety, further encouraging pro-environmental action [57].

6. Conclusions

Pro-environmental action may be measurably influenced by climate anxiety. Through this study, we have replicated previous findings examining that a moderate level of climate anxiety may be optimal for pro-environment behaviours, utilising a more complex financial DCE. These findings indicate that this phenomenon spreads across different choices with environmentally focused options. The findings also identify that people with moderate levels of climate anxiety, sustainability or eco-friendliness may be a primary consideration in decision making; whereas, for people with low or high levels, evidence suggests this is a secondary consideration. This may have indicate that high levels of climate anxiety may result in debilitation, or failure to act, for some people. These findings are relevant as they indicate how priorities for investment options may shift based on related factors, such as climate anxiety, increasing the importance of relevant attributes, such as sustainability, in these decisions. This research may have been limited by a lack of incentives for participants when making these decisions; future research may further examine these choices with incentives offered to participants to examine whether this may change behaviours. Future research should examine whether this inverted-U phenomenon continues to exist across other consumer choice decisions and aim at examining failure to act in people with high levels of climate anxiety.