Social Connectedness and Climate Change Anxiety: Rethinking Protective Factors In the Context of Environmental Risk

This study examines the relationship between structural environmental risk and climate change anxiety among young adults, with particular attention to the role of social connectedness as a potential protective factor. As climate change intensifies, its mental health consequences, especially climate change anxiety (CCA), are emerging as a critical area of concern within social work research, policy, and practice. At the same time, environmental justice (EJ) scholarship has demonstrated that exposure to environmental hazards is unevenly distributed, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. Despite these parallel lines of inquiry, limited empirical research has integrated objective environmental risk indicators with psychosocial outcomes and protective social processes. This study addresses this gap by advancing a novel, interdisciplinary framework grounded in ecosocial theory, environmental determinants of health, and critical environmental justice.

Using a cross-sectional survey design, data were collected from a large sample (N ≈ 1,700) of young adults ages 18–29 residing in New Jersey. Climate change anxiety was measured using the Climate Change Anxiety Scale (Clayton & Karazsia, 2020), while social connectedness was operationalized through the Sense of Community Index-2 (SCI-2). Structural environmental risk was assessed using geospatially linked data from FEMA’s National Risk Index (NRI), incorporating indicators such as expected annual loss, social vulnerability, and community resilience. Participants’ residential zip codes were mapped to census tracts to assign corresponding NRI scores, enabling the integration of individual-level survey responses with community-level environmental risk data. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine direct effects, moderation, and the influence of demographic covariates including race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status.

Findings revealed that structural environmental risk, as measured by the NRI, was not a statistically significant predictor of climate change anxiety when controlling for demographic variables. Contrary to the study’s primary hypothesis, social connectedness did not buffer the relationship between environmental risk and anxiety. Instead, higher levels of social connectedness were positively associated with increased climate change anxiety. These findings suggest that social connectedness may function as a “double-edged” construct, potentially heightening awareness of collective vulnerability, moral responsibility, and shared ecological concern, rather than solely mitigating distress.

The study contributes to an emerging body of literature that challenges assumptions about the linear relationship between environmental exposure and mental health outcomes. It underscores the importance of incorporating both objective and subjective dimensions of environmental risk, including perception, lived experience, and community context. From a social work perspective, the findings highlight the need to reconceptualize protective factors within climate-related mental health frameworks and to critically examine how relational processes shape emotional responses to climate change.

Implications for research, practice, and policy are discussed. These include the integration of mental health indicators into environmental justice and climate resilience planning, the development of community-based interventions that address both collective coping and climate awareness, and the need for longitudinal and mixed-methods research designs to better capture causal pathways. By centering social connectedness within an ecosocial framework, this study advances a more nuanced understanding of climate change anxiety and offers important directions for equitable and justice-oriented social work responses to the climate crisis.