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 hypothesized in a preregistered study (https://osf.io/cs2h9) that intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and future anticipation would significantly influence whether climate anxiety associates more strongly with adaptation versus mitigation behaviors. 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 uncertainty—as central within the network, positively linked to adaptation behaviors and climate anxiety. Conversely, inhibitory IU (marked by paralysis in uncertainty) appeared peripheral. This study advances novel computational approaches in environmental psychology by underscoring the critical yet understudied role of adaptation and offers novel, data-driven insights into its connection with climate anxiety, future anticipation, and intolerance of uncertainty.