25 individual transilience in the face of climate change outcome efficacy (i.e., the extent to which people think adaptation actions are effective in reducing climate change risks; van Valkengoed & Steg, 2019b), as transformability reflects whether people perceive the possibility for positive and transformative outcomes deriving from dealing with climate change. In sum, in the context of climate change, higher transilience means that people more strongly perceive they can persist in the face of climate change risks, can have a broad range of options to deal with these risks, and can positively change by adapting to these risks. The Present Research We aim to study to what extent people perceive transilience in the face of climate change risks, and whether higher transilience indeed predicts adaptation behaviours, support for adaptation policies, and general well-being. To understand the value of the construct of transilience in the context of climate change adaptation, we need to measure it. Hence, we aim to develop and validate a scale to assess transilience in the context of climate change, based on our theoretical framework. First, we generated a pool of items that reflect persistence, adaptability, and transformability. Next, these items were evaluated by experts in terms of relevance and clarity, and adapted accordingly, when needed. Thereafter, we conducted four online studies to assess the content, concurrent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the transilience scale. All studies were approved by the Ethical Committee of the University of Groningen. We tested content validity by examining whether the items capture the three components of transilience. In addition, we tested whether the transilience scale indeed assesses a single construct, as we propose transilience comprises all three components. We tested concurrent and discriminant validity by examining the correlation between transilience and theoretically related constructs (Boateng et al., 2018). First, as indicated above, we expect higher transilience to be positively related to self- and outcome efficacy for climate change adaptation. Furthermore, we expect that transilience is positively related to general psychological resilience (i.e., the general capacity to bounce back in life in general; Smith et al., 2008, 2010), as we draw on it for the persistence component. Yet, as we propose that transilience is different from self-efficacy, outcome efficacy, and general resilience, we expect that the relationship with these constructs is not too strong (i.e., correlations should be below the cut-off for construct overlap of around r = .85; Kenny, 2016). Moreover, we expect higher transilience to be related to more positive affect about climate change (e.g., optimism), as people acknowledge many ways to adapt, as well as potential beneficial 2
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw