Transilience, as a novel construct, reflects how people perceive they can persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform in the face of climate change, estimating an ability to adapt positively to climate change adversity and being a promising element in future environmental psychology research. Previous research has yielded inconsistent findings about the validity of transilience, and the evidence of distinctiveness between transilience and efficacy constructs (i.e., self-efficacy and outcome efficacy) was insufficient, limiting the ability of transilience to contribute to existing environmental psychology theories and research. This study estimates the validity of transilience and validates whether and to what extent the transilience and efficacy constructs are distinct in China. An online survey was implemented with a quota sample (N = 1141). We found that transilience was associated with climate change mitigation intentions, well-being, self-efficacy, outcome efficacy, and risk perceptions. More importantly, our results suggested that transilience and efficacy constructs partially overlap but are meaningfully distinct. Moreover, transilience uniquely predicts climate change outcomes while controlling for outcome efficacy and self-efficacy. Therefore, the transilience construct can contribute uniquely and meaningfully to the literature, adding to existing environmental psychology theories containing only efficacy constructs.