Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 19, 2024
Date Accepted: Aug 19, 2025
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Decoding public’s real-time emotional and cognitive responses to the changing climate on social media
ABSTRACT
Background:
Climate change poses a significant threat to global mental health and well-being. Existing research on the associations between climate change-related events and mental well-being outcomes has primarily relied on a single approach, such as cross-sectional surveys conducted at specific time points or in disaster settings. However, the long-term effects and variability of the changing climate on mental well-being remain relatively unexplored. Additionally, the underlying mechanisms that link changing climate conditions to real-time emotional well-being and pro-environmental actions have rarely been studied.
Objective:
This study aimed to address these gaps by integrating multiple data sources, including social media posts about climate change on Weibo (n=76,514), 20 years of regional meteorological data (n(records) = 216,476), and regional vulnerability data in China.
Methods:
This study proposed and tested a new mechanism that connects meteorological factors with emotional well-being through three cognitive responses identified from social media posts: thinking styles, social affiliations, and somatosensory experiences. Psycholinguistic analysis, structural equation modeling, and multiple regression models were utilized to examine the mediation of these three conceptual factors, as well as the moderating effects of regional vulnerability and seasonal changes on the influence of climate change on public emotional well-being and downstream pro-environmental tendencies.
Results:
The results revealed that extreme hot days and hotter temperatures were associated with more negative emotional well-being and lower pro-environmental tendencies and these effects were mediated by three proposed mediators (P<.001 for social affiliations and thinking styles, P=.01 for somatosensory experiences) and moderated by seasons (P=.009) and regional population density (P=.007).
Conclusions:
The findings emphasize the need for interventions that promote mental well-being in response to climate change. They highlight the importance of cognitive responses in enhancing coping abilities and encouraging pro-environmental behaviors.
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Copyright
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