Defense Date

4-29-2026

Graduation Date

Summer 8-7-2026

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Psychology

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Lori Koelsch

Committee Member

Will Adams

Committee Member

Jessie Goicoechea

Keywords

eco-anxiety, eco-psychology

Abstract

This dissertation explores the lived experience of eco-anxiety among young adults aware of the ongoing ecological crisis but not directly exposed to climate-related disasters. Grounded in the human science tradition, ecopsychology, and existential phenomenology, this study employed Scott Churchill’s (2022) approach to Existential Phenomenological Research (EPR) to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon of eco-anxiety. Four participants, residing in Pittsburgh and aged 18-25, produced written experiential descriptions and participated in open-ended phenomenological interviews. As outlined by EPR, this data was analyzed through meaning unit delineation, imaginative variation, phenomenological reduction, and structural synthesis to produce individual situated structures of eco-anxiety for each participant, as well as a cumulative general structure of eco-anxiety. Findings reveal eco-anxiety as a pervasive existential mood, structured by a sense of future precarity, tension between individual agency and collective responsibility, oscillation between alienation and belonging with others, intense embodied distress, and a relentless pressure on conscious life, rather than a discrete pathological symptom. While participants described despair, helplessness, and exhaustion, eco-anxiety simultaneously emerged as a source of care, moral attunement, and a movement towards stewardship and connection. These findings suggest that eco-anxiety is better understood as a meaningful existential response to the ongoing ecological crisis rather than a pathological condition.

Language

English

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