Han, Yimeng2026-07-242026-07-242026-07-132026-07-20http://hdl.handle.net/1993/39901Climate change hopelessness has been observed across the globe and is a psychological barrier to engagement in pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs). Drawing on the life-span theory of control, the present research investigated whether secondary control strategies could offset the negative effects of climate change hopelessness on environmental engagement. Secondary control refers to cognitive strategies that help individuals accept or accommodate themselves to external situations that are difficult to change. Study 1 recruited 289 Canadian adult respondents from the Prolific online platform. They provided information through a cross-sectional survey regarding their climate change hopelessness, primary control striving, use of secondary control strategies, environmental identity, and both self-reported and performance-based measures of PEBs. In Study 2, 123 undergraduates at the University of Manitoba were randomly assigned to conditions of a 2 × 2 factorial experiment that manipulated participants’ feelings of climate change hopelessness and availability of secondary control, before presenting them with a performance-based measure of PEB. The proposed explanatory model, adapted from the life-span theory of control, was not supported. However, several important findings emerged that highlight the adaptive role of secondary control strategies in regulating environmental effort. In Study 1, secondary control strategies appeared to offset the negative influence of climate change hopelessness on routine and citizenship PEBs, either directly or indirectly through the maintenance of environmental identity. Both studies also demonstrated that self-reported and performance-based measures of PEB reflected different aspects of environmental engagement, with the latter primarily capturing momentary persistence in effortful and personally costly environmental decisions. Across both studies, individuals who more strongly endorsed secondary control strategies, or were experimentally primed with them, were more likely to withdraw effort from performance-based PEBs. Altogether, the findings suggest that secondary control strategies facilitate the adaptive regulation of effort by helping individuals maintain commitment to environmental values while also adaptively disengaging from PEBs that are costly to sustain. In this way, secondary control strategies may help individuals remain engaged with environmental goals and actions through sustainable actions, despite experiences of climate change hopelessness.engClimate change hopelessnessSecondary ControlPro-environmental behavioursIdentity