Beyond the watery grave: death and water reminders as (un)expected ways to increase environmental identity / <i>Más allá de la tumba acuática: recordatorios de muerte y agua como formas (in)esperadas para fomentar la identidad ambiental</i>

Climate change increasingly stresses global water availability and reliability via either too much (e.g., floods) or too little (e.g., droughts). To ensure safe and equitable water access and management, significant behaviour changes are needed among both water consumers and decision-makers. Yet discussing water vulnerabilities can be existentially threatening because these water crises involve considering potential physical harm or death from a life-sustaining resource. According to Terror Management Theory (TMT), implicit or explicit awareness of existential threats may result in contradictory identity reinforcements that may actually limit positive water solutions. We examined how three life-threatening water messages — specifically drowning, contaminated water consumption, dehydration — influenced environmental identity compared to a standard mortality threat and a control among 455 Canadian and American adults. Our results indicated that existentially threatening messages significantly increased environmental identity polarization ( p &lt; .05). Given these findings, we discuss implications for sustainable water management within an increasingly threatening global environment.