From mitigation to adaptation: Network analysis of their interrelations with climate anxiety, pessimistic future anticipation, and intolerance of uncertainty

Climate change represents an unprecedented threat, with rising levels of climate anxiety widely reported. Most psychological research has primarily examined relationships between climate anxiety and mitigation behaviors while largely neglecting adaptation behaviors, which involve preparing for inevitable climate impacts. Yet, ethological and foundational anxiety theories emphasize anxiety's adaptive role in fostering preparedness and proactive coping with threats, particularly in uncertain, future-oriented situations. Based on this framework, we examined whether intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and future anticipation influence the association between climate anxiety and adaptation versus mitigation behaviors. In a preregistered fashion, we analyzed data from 968 French-speaking adults using two complementary computational network modeling approaches: (1) a graphical Gaussian model to examine conditional associations among climate anxiety, IU components (prospective and inhibitory), future anticipation, experience of climate change, and adaptation and mitigation behaviors; and (2) a directed acyclic graph to generate a data-driven model of the directional probabilistic dependencies among these variables. Results consistently highlighted prospective IU—characterized by proactive information-seeking and planning in the face of uncertainty—as central within the network, and positively linked to adaptation behaviors and climate anxiety. Conversely, inhibitory IU (characterized by paralysis in uncertainty) appeared to be peripheral. This study, which relies on new computational methods, emphasizes the essential yet overlooked role of adaptation and offers fresh, data-driven insights into its relationship with climate anxiety, future anticipations, and intolerance of uncertainty.