A New Planetary Affective Science Framework for Eco-Emotions: Findings on Eco-Anger, Eco-Grief, and Eco-Anxiety

Abstract

Emotions play a critical role in human health and behavior yet have largely been overlooked in the context of the global environmental crisis (GEC). Despite recent emphasis on climate anxiety and eco-anxiety, there is a lack of psychometric or dimensional measures assessing the fuller range of GEC-associated emotions, especially beyond Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) contexts. Further conceptual gaps hinder structured inquiry and generalizability. This exploratory study applies a new planetary affective science framework to holistically and systematically address these issues. We used a circumplex model to map core affect and structured interviews with 15 Turkish environmentalists to explore the range of eco-emotions. Our findings suggest the prevalence of eco-anger and eco-grief over the eco-anxiety most often assessed in WEIRD contexts. Similar findings in post-disaster situations underscore participants’ heightened vulnerability to cumulative stressors and the dangers of emotion-specific omissions (e.g., anger) in assessment tools. We identified environmental justice, developing country tension, self-efficacy dimensions, and responsibility attributions to the Turkish government and Global North as key contextual factors in these differentiated eco-emotional patterns. Findings constitute the first step toward more holistic, diverse, and conceptually rigorous eco-emotions research, urgently needed for more effective pro-environmental health and behavioral interventions amidst the intensifying GEC.

Keywords

• eco-emotions
• affect
• climate change
• planetary boundaries
• environmental justice