56 chapter 2 findings suggest that transilience could potentially promote adaptation intentions and behaviours and general well-being in the face of climate change risks. Lastly, our results indicated that self-efficacy and outcome efficacy beliefs may be equally if not more strongly related to adaptive measures, positive emotions, and well-being. More specifically, transilience consistently explained additional variance in general well-being when controlling for self-efficacy, outcome efficacy, and resilience. However, transilience mostly did not explain unique variance in intentions, behaviour, and policy support, particularly in the last two studies. The question remains whether this is generally the case, or whether transilience has added value in specific circumstances. More research is needed to answer these questions. Still, it seems that transilience plays a unique role in making people feel better overall in the face of climate change. Practical Implications Our research has potentially relevant practical implications. Our findings suggest that it is important to consider the potential beneficial side of dealing with climate change risks, as this may not only promote climate adaptive actions that would reduce individuals’ vulnerability to climate change risks, but also make people feel better overall. Specifically, it seems that a potential way to promote adaptation behaviour and wellbeing is emphasising how people can persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform by adapting to climate change risks. For example, a campaign aiming to encourage house urban greening could show residents and make explicit how they are determined to adapt to climate change risks, emphasise the many ways in which greening can be implemented (green rooftops, planting trees, removing tiles from backyards) and point out that people can learn new things (e.g. about plant caretaking and gardening) and benefit (e.g. more aesthetically pleasant garden, cooler temperatures in the summer, cleaner oxygen) by engaging in these behaviours. More research is needed to test the effectiveness of messages about transilience in encouraging adaptation behaviours and examine whether this would also enhance well-being. A Chinese proverb states: “When the wind of change blows, some people build walls while others build windmills”. We introduced transilience to show that, despite the ‘gloom and doom’ side of climate change, there is still room for a more positive perspective on climate change adaptation. Our research highlights that people perceive they can do more than ‘bounce back’ in the face of climate change. Moreover, the more people perceive they have the capacity to persist, adapt flexibly and positively transform in the face of climate change risks, the more they take concrete action to adapt, and the higher their general well-being. As such, perceived transilience might be relevant to ensure that by adapting to climate change we are able to both minimize harm (i.e., build walls), and exploit beneficial opportunities (i.e., build windmills).
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