Understanding Eco-anxiety: A Systematic Scoping Review of Current Literature and Identified Knowledge Gaps

Eco-anxiety is the distress caused by climate change where people are becoming anxious about their future. The present scoping reveiw critically evaluated and synthesized the scholarly literature on eco-anxiety and reported it using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analy...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yumiko Coffey, Navjot Bhullar, Joanne Durkin, Md Shahidul Islam, Kim Usher
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Elsevier 2021
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Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/6e57e86eb6ef4feb82c55f91c60076a8
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Summary:Eco-anxiety is the distress caused by climate change where people are becoming anxious about their future. The present scoping reveiw critically evaluated and synthesized the scholarly literature on eco-anxiety and reported it using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) [1]. The study aims were twofold: (i) to understand how eco-anxiety was operationalized in the existing literature, and (ii) the key characteristics of eco-anxiety. Our review found that further research is needed to provide conceptual clarity of the term eco-anxiety. We found that most of the evidence comes from the Western countries, and future research is needed in the non-Western countries. Indigenous peoples, children and young people, and those connected to the natural world are most impacted by eco-anxiety and are identified as vulnerable. We recommend employing diverse methodologies to better understand their lived experiences of eco-anxiety.