From anxiety to coping: Understanding psychological distance and coping skills for climate change and COVID-19 in 10-12-year-old children.

Children worldwide experience climate anxiety, defined as a chronic fear of environmental catastrophe. Following other scholars who sought comparison between the perceived risks and our collective responses with the COVID-19 pandemic, as they can both be considered global crises. Children's emotional responses, psychological distance and coping strategies to climate change compared and COVID-19 are compared, using a mixed-method longitudinal study among 231 primary school children across the Republic of Ireland.

A Research Agenda to Better Understand the Human Dimensions of Energy Transitions.

The Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) have a key role to play in understanding which factors and policies would motivate, encourage and enable different actors to adopt a wide range of sustainable energy behaviours and support the required system changes and policies. The SSH can provide critical insights into how consumers could be empowered to consistently engage in sustainable energy behaviour, support and adopt new technologies, and support policies and changes in energy systems. Furthermore, they can increase our understanding of how organisations such as private and public institutions, and groups and associations of people can play a key role in the sustainable energy transition.

Risk Perceptions Toward Drinking Water Quality Among Private Well Owners in Ireland: The Illusion of Control.

In rural areas where no public or group water schemes exist, groundwater is often the only source of drinking water and is extracted by drilling private wells. Typically, private well owners are responsible for the quality and testing of their own drinking water. Previous studies indicate that well owners tend to underestimate the risks of their well water being contaminated, yet little is known about why this is the case.

How trust and emotions influence policy acceptance: The case of the Irish water charges.

The introduction of new policies can evoke strong emotional reactions by the public. Yet, social-psychological research has paid little attention to affective determinants of individual-level policy acceptance. Building on recent theoretical and empirical advances around emotions and decision-making, we evaluate how people's trust and integral emotions function as important antecedents of cognitive evaluations, and subsequent acceptance of policies.