Parental responses to climate threat: Italian Validation of the Climate Self-Protection Scale and the role of eco-defenses, epistemic stances, and eco-anxiety

Climate change has psychological repercussions that challenge individuals' basic assumptions about stability and safety and contribute to emotional suffering. Parents may be particularly vulnerable to eco-anxiety, given concerns about the long-term impact on their children's well-being. This research, conducted in Italy, examined how defenses against climate change ("eco-defenses") and epistemic stances (trust, mistrust, credulity) shape parents' eco-anxiety across two studies. In Study 1 (N = 1259 Italian-speaking adults), we validated the Italian version of the Climate Self-Protection Scale, confirming its original five-factor structure: Rationalization, Avoidance, Denial of Personal Outcome Severity, Denial of Global Outcome Severity, and Denial of Guilt. In Study 2 (N = 986 Italian parents), we investigated how eco-defenses and epistemic stances, and their interaction, were associated with the four eco-anxiety symptoms: affective symptoms, rumination, behavioral symptoms, and anxiety about personal impact. Both eco-defenses and epistemic stances showed significant associations with eco-anxiety, highlighting distinct pathways through which parents regulate the emotional burden of, and process information about, climate change. These findings identify eco-defenses and epistemic stances as key psychological processes in parental adaptation to ecological threats and highlight potential intervention targets to support family resilience.