12 chapter 1 illnesses (Bostock et al., 2009; Carver & Antoni, 2004; Meyerson et al., 2011; Tomich & Helgeson, 2004), and that a prominent definition of climate change adaptation refers to both minimizing harm and finding new opportunities (IPCC, 2014b). Instead, the academic literature on climate change adaptation predominantly focuses on the negative consequences that climate change has for people and on possible ways to minimise them (Fritze et al., 2008; Manning & Clayton, 2018; Doherty, 2018). Similarly, the literature on adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic typically focuses on how people showed resilience by maintaining and recovering a certain psychological equilibrium (i.e., “bouncing back”; Bozdag & Ergun, 2021; Chen & Bonanno, 2020; Luceño-Moreno et al., 2020; Riehm et al., 2021). Although it is clear that contemporary adversities present a significant threat, and that resilience is an important component of adaptation, focusing exclusively on minimising harm and maintaining the status quo constitutes a limited perspective on human adaptation to these large-scale challenges. In this PhD dissertation, we introduce the novel construct of transilience, which we define as the perceived capacity to persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform when confronted with an adversity. As such, transilience provides a broad perspective on human adaptation in the face of adversities that acknowledges the possibility for positive change, hence that is not merely about ‘bouncing back’ to what we had. In this dissertation, we aim to address two key overarching research questions. First, do people perceive they can be transilient, and thus perceive they can persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform in the face of large-scale adversities, in particular climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic? Second, to what extent does higher transilience promote engagement in adaptation actions and mental health in the face of such adversities? Across the chapters presented in this dissertation, we address more specific questions related to these overarching research questions. Below we elaborate on our conceptualization of transilience and the specific research questions we aim to address. 1.2 PERCEIVING TRANSILIENCE IN THE FACE OF CONTEMPORARY ADVERSITIES We theorise that transilience comprises three components. Specifically, it reflects people’s perceived capacity to persist (persistence), adapt flexibly (adaptability), and positively transform (transformability) in the face of an adversity. The first component of transilience indicates the perceived capacity to persist in the face of an adversity, thus it reflects whether people perceive they have the resources to cope and carry on in the face of it. Persistence is at the core of resilience, commonly
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