Assessing eco-anxiety across the lifespan: A systematic review of current global scales

Background

Eco-anxiety is a growing global concern. While research has sought to understand eco-anxiety and its impact on mental health, there is limited consensus regarding the validity and reliability of eco-anxiety assessment scales. Appropriate scales are needed to enable accurate assessment and effective management of eco-anxiety. The review aims to outline existing eco-anxiety scales across the lifespan, critically evaluate their content, development, psychometric properties, and cross-cultural validity, to identify the most robust scales, and propose recommendations for the future development of eco-anxiety scales.

Methods

PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar were searched (up until May 2025). Articles that developed or validated an eco-anxiety or climate change anxiety scale were eligible. Information regarding the content, development process, psychometric properties, and cross-cultural validation were extracted.

Results

Sixty-seven articles were included in the review. Twelve scales were identified, assessing eco-anxiety (n = 4) and climate change anxiety (n = 8). Half of the scales were developed for adults (≥18 years) and most were developed in Western/European countries.

Conclusions

The Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale and the climate anxiety subscale from the Inventory of Climate Emotions were identified as the most robust measures of eco-anxiety and climate change anxiety, respectively. Several limitations of existing eco-anxiety scales were identified, such as insufficient content captured by items, inadequate development processes, minimal reporting of psychometric properties, and poor consideration of participants’ demographic characteristics. We propose recommendations to refine the development of future scales to facilitate a more consolidated understanding of eco-anxiety.