Eco-anxiety is a growing global concern. While research has sought to understand eco-anxiety and its impact on mental health, there is limited consensus regarding the validity and reliability of eco-anxiety assessment scales. Appropriate scales are needed to enable accurate assessment and effective management of eco-anxiety. The review aims to outline existing eco-anxiety scales across the lifespan, critically evaluate their content, development, psychometric properties, and cross-cultural validity, to identify the most robust scales, and propose recommendations for the future development of eco-anxiety scales.

PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar were searched (up until May 2025). Articles that developed or validated an eco-anxiety or climate change anxiety scale were eligible. Information regarding the content, development process, psychometric properties, and cross-cultural validation were extracted.

Sixty-seven articles were included in the review. Twelve scales were identified, assessing eco-anxiety ( n = 4) and climate change anxiety ( n = 8). Half of the scales were developed for adults (≥18 years) and most were developed in Western/European countries.

The Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale and the climate anxiety subscale from the Inventory of Climate Emotions were identified as the most robust measures of eco-anxiety and climate change anxiety, respectively. Several limitations of existing eco-anxiety scales were identified, such as insufficient content captured by items, inadequate development processes, minimal reporting of psychometric properties, and poor consideration of participants’ demographic characteristics . We propose recommendations to refine the development of future scales to facilitate a more consolidated understanding of eco-anxiety.