- Title
- Measuring environmental concern in Australian youth: relationships with neuroticism, agreeableness, anxiety, and resilience
- Creator
- McGlinn, Anica
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2024
- Description
- Masters Research - Master of Clinical Psychology (MClinPsych)
- Description
- Climate change is the biggest threat to global public health, impacting significantly on environmental concern, and substantially influencing physical and mental wellbeing, with these consequences only expected to increase over time. Young people are particularly susceptible to the impacts of environmental issues and experience strong nuanced concern around this. There is a paucity of research exploring the factors influencing environmental concern in young people, particularly within an Australian context. As such, the current study utilised data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children and investigated the influence of personality, including neuroticism and agreeableness, on environmental concern in Australian young people, and explored whether anxiety and resilience impacted these relationships. As predicted, neuroticism increased levels of environmental concern in young Australians. Unexpectedly, agreeableness did not influence levels of environmental concern. As expected, anxiety mediated the relationship between neuroticism and environmental concern. Additionally, as anticipated, resilience moderated the relationship between neuroticism, anxiety, and environmental concern, and the direct relationship between neuroticism and environmental concern. Individual differences, including personality (i.e., neuroticism and resilience) and mental wellbeing (i.e., anxiety) evidently influence environmental concern in young Australians, impacting the widespread mental health consequences resulting from such concern. These findings may provide a valuable framework, including variables to target, for future research and clinical interventions to support the wellbeing of young people.
- Subject
- neuroticism; agreeableness; resilience; anxiety; environmental concern; climate concern; Australia; youth; children; adolescents
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1514261
- Identifier
- uon:56835
- Rights
- Copyright 2024 Anica McGlinn
- Language
- eng
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