ClimHope

Background

Climate change is one of the most serious problems confronting humanity, and young people are among those most affected by it. Research across many countries shows that young people are deeply worried about climate change, and recent surveys suggest that hope is decreasing while hopelessness may be on the rise. Yet while research on climate anxiety has grown rapidly, climate-change hopelessness has received comparatively little attention.

ClimHope addresses this gap. The project starts from the premise that hopelessness, broadly understood as the sense that it is too late to do anything about climate change, can pose risks to mental wellbeing, climate engagement, and democratic participation more broadly. At the same time, hopelessness is unlikely to be a single uniform phenomenon. Different young people may feel hopeless for very different reasons, and those differences are likely to matter for the outcomes hopelessness produces in their lives.

Aims and research questions

ClimHope investigates four main questions:

1. How common is climate-change hopelessness among emerging adults, and what different types and sources exist?
2. Are there differences in climate-change hopelessness between groups of young people living in different countries (Finland, Denmark, Sweden), between genders, and between indigenous Sami young people and other groups in Finland?
3. How is hopelessness related to climate-change engagement, civic engagement more broadly, mental wellbeing, and other climate emotions?
4. Which resilience factors can prevent destructive hopelessness and support constructive hope, active engagement, and mental wellbeing?

Theoretical framework

The project is grounded in appraisal theories of emotions (Lazarus, 1991; Smith & Kirby, 2009), which see emotions as the product of how people interpret situations in relation to their goals, values, and beliefs about the future. From this perspective, two people facing the same circumstances may feel very different emotions, and the same emotion can be built on different underlying appraisals. Earlier work by the principal investigator has shown that climate-change hope can be grounded in either constructive sources or in denial, with very different consequences for engagement (Ojala, 2012a, 2015). ClimHope extends this logic to hopelessness.

A second guiding framework is socio-ecological resilience (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Folke, 2016). The project examines resilience factors at individual, interpersonal, and broader social and educational levels, and considers persistence, adaptability, and transformability as three distinct forms of resilience.

Approach

ClimHope uses a sequential mixed-method design across five substudies:

• A longitudinal quantitative survey in Sweden, following senior high-school students across their three years of upper secondary education, with measures of climate emotions, mental wellbeing, engagement, and possible resilience factors.
• A qualitative survey study in Finland using open-ended questions to identify sources of hope and hopelessness.
• A qualitative study of flash fiction stories in Denmark written by senior high-school students, in collaboration with the University of Southern Denmark, exploring how hopelessness and other climate emotions appear in young people's imagined climate futures.
• A semi-structured interview study with emerging adults at university level, analyzed with interpretative phenomenological analysis.
• A cross-sectional survey in Northern Finland that uses the qualitative findings to develop and test a new quantitative measure of climate-change hopelessness, including comparisons between Sami young people and other groups.

The quantitative analyses combine variable-oriented approaches (correlation, regression, structural equation modelling) with person-oriented approaches (cluster analysis, latent profile analysis) to capture both group-level relationships and individual patterns.

Team

ClimHope is led by Professor Maria Ojala at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Oulu. The project team includes doctoral researcher Juan-Miguel Diaz Castro and postdoctoral researcher Salla Veijonaho.

International collaborators and co-supervisors:

• Associate Professor Bryan Yazell, University of Southern Denmark
• Associate Professor Marlis Wullenkord, Lund University

Scientific advisory board:

• Professor Keri Facer, University of Bristol (futures studies, education)
• Professor Susan Clayton, The College of Wooster, USA (climate-change psychology)
• Associate Professor Panu Pihkala, University of Helsinki (climate emotions)
• Associate Professor Tapio Nykänen, University of Oulu (political science, Sami research)

Funding and affiliations

ClimHope is funded by the Eudaimonia Spearhead call (2026–2029) at the University of Oulu, and is affiliated with the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) research program and the SERSus research group.

Expected project outcomes and actions

• Peer-reviewed articles published in open-access form, targeting journals such as Environmental Education Research and Journal of Environmental Psychology, alongside broader outlets aimed at a wider scientific audience.
• A new quantitative scale measuring different sources of climate-change hopelessness, developed from the qualitative findings.
• One doctoral dissertation and several postdoctoral publications completed within the project period.
• Conference presentations and academic talks throughout the project's lifetime.
• A co-created outreach activity in 2029, developed together with young people, taking a first step toward an intervention for socio-ecological resilience.
• Dissemination through the FRONT communication network, popular science writing, and direct engagement with schools and teachers in the Oulu region, with implications for teacher education and sustainability education more broadly.
• Knowledge directly relevant to UN Sustainable Development Goals 13 (Climate Action), 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), 12 (Responsible Consumption), and 4 (Quality Education).