Addressing the gender environmentalism gap: The role of universalism, self‐construal, and perceived urbanization in shaping environmental prioritization

Although it is widely accepted that women are more pro-environmental than men, findings regarding gender differences in environmental concern have actually been mixed. In this study, we attempt to reconcile these mixed findings by considering the influence of sociocultural contexts. Specifically, we propose that some sociocultural contexts tend to hinder the psychological process that underlies gender differences in environmental concern. We tested this sociocultural hindrance hypothesis with an international survey data set (International Social Survey Programme) that involved respondents from 32 countries. We found that gender differences in environmental concern were smaller in societies with higher levels of gender inequality, economic scarcity, power distance, and collectivism. These results highlight the need to examine both the “why” and “when” questions for gender differences in environmental concern. They also indicate the importance of considering not only individual-level variables but also societal-level factors in the study of environmental concern.

While numerous cross-sectional studies find modest gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, this pattern has not been examined over time—primarily due to a lack of suitable data. Using twenty-two years of nationally representative survey data from the Swedish general public, we test whether the theoretically expected relationship between gender and environmental concern—where women are modestly more proenvironmental than men—is robust over time. Results from our multivariate ordered logistic regression models reveal a consistent pattern over the time period. Across all available years of data, women report greater environmental concern than men in the Swedish general public. Specifically, Swedish women report greater worry about environmental destruction, greater worry about climate change, and greater support for environmental protection than men. Thus, this gender difference in environmental concern is indeed robust. The theoretically expected relationship between gender and environmental concern is robust not only across environmental concern indicators and countries of study but also over time.

We examine theoretical arguments explaining gender differences in environmental concern using data from six Gallup surveys in the 2000s. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, we examine the direct and indirect effects of gender and other key variables on two factors of environmental concern: worry about health-related environmental problems and worry about global environmental problems. We find weak but consistent support for the safety concerns hypothesis, which expects that women are more concerned than are men about health-related environmental problems. Our results offer no support for various arguments that men's and women's differential performance of key social roles in society account for gender differences in environmental concern. We find consistent support for the claim that risk perception mediates the direct effect of gender on environmental concern. We end with a discussion of fruitful avenues for future research on gender differences in environmental concern.

ABSTRACTWe examine the direct effects of social roles and value orientations believed to be derived from gender socialization on environmental concern. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) and Wave 2 of the Baylor Religion Survey (BRS), we find that among U.S. adults, value orientations about social roles, but not social roles themselves, influence environmental concern. Gender traditionalism is found to have a significant negative relationship with environmental concern for women, and no effect for men. Conversely, an ethic of care is found positively related to environmental concern for both men and women. The results suggest that observed differences between genders in environmental concern are related to gender socialization; however (1) different forms of socialized value orientations influence environmentalism in opposing ways, and (2) the effects of an ethic of care may be gender neutral. We conclude with a discussion of potential directions for future research on gender differences in environmental concern.

The debate over gender differences in environmental concern is sharply divided. One set of theories expects women to be more environmentally concerned than men while another set expects the opposite to be true. This study, based on a random sample of college students at a medium-sized midwestern university, tests the impact of gender on environmental concern while controlling for class standing and family income. The sample used in the final analysis consisted of 340 white students and 25 nonwhite students. Males were found to be slightly more likely than females to express environmental concern. Theoretical refinements regarding the effects of gender are drawn from marginality theory, and the overall relevance of gender is addressed.

Numerous studies find modest, consistent gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, but results from the few studies of gender differences among politicians are inconsistent. We test if women report stronger environmental concern than men across four levels of the Swedish polity, utilising three data sets: a representative sample of the general public, a survey of all representatives in municipal-level and county-level councils, and a survey of members of the Swedish Parliament. Results from our multivariate ordered logistic regression models reveal a consistent pattern across the lower three levels: women report greater environmental concern than men in the general public and in municipal and county councils. In the Swedish Parliament, however, the apparent effect of gender is largely explained by political orientation.

In the discourse on the heterogeneity of gender and environmental concern, gender equality awareness can further illuminate the complexity of gender and environmental concern across different cultural backgrounds. Differing from prior research, our study focuses on exploring the relationship between different genders, gender equality awareness, and environmental concern, as well as investigating whether gender equality awareness has distinct effects on environmental concern among different genders. Utilizing data from the 2021 China General Social Survey (CGSS), we conducted a theoretical investigation into gender differences in environmental concern. First, we used descriptive statistics to observe the differences between the samples. Secondly, in order to compare the influence of gender equality awareness on different genders, we conducted t-tests on gender subgroups. Subsequently, an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model was employed to examine the effects of gender and gender equality awareness on environmental issues. Finally, gender equality awareness was introduced as a moderating variable to explore its potential interaction with gender and investigate whether a moderation mechanism exists between gender and environmental concern. Findings indicate that 1) male respondents in China exhibit greater concern for the environment compared to female respondents; 2) higher levels of gender equality awareness are positively correlated with higher levels of environmental concern; 3) the influence of gender on environmental concern is moderated by the degree of gender equality awareness. Specifically, when gender equality awareness is strengthened, female respondents exhibit a higher degree of environmental concern. Enhancing gender equality awareness contributes to improving both social gender equality and equitable concern for the environment. The findings could provide insights for similar developing countries like China.

Research on environmental concern in the past few decades consistently finds that women express slightly greater environmental concern than men. This pattern is robust across samples, nations, time, and facets of environmental concern measured. In a recent suite of articles analyzing data from a few nationally representative data sets for the U.S. general public, we examine explanations for gender differences in environmental concern derived from gender socialization theory. We explain our key findings here, before providing five insights for supporting a comprehensive research agenda on gender and environmental concern. These range from specific suggestions on conceptual measurement and analytical techniques to more general ones for improving our social science data infrastructure.

The article deals with analyses concerning the interplay of environmentally relevant knowledge, attitudes, and behavior as well as gender differences in environmental concern and the role of "background variables" for the prediction of (self-reported) behavior. In a sample of 167 German adults, the results showed that knowledge and gender moderated the relationship between attitudes and behavior. For a second sample of 105 people active in conservation groups, these moderator effects were not as clear. For both samples, women were more environmentally concerned in those topical areas that refer to household behavior, whereas men knew more about environmental problems. Possible reasons for these effects are discussed. Finally, the role of "background variables" is investigated by means of stepwise regression and discriminant analyses, using self-reported behavior as the central dependent variable. For the purpose of this study, a new measurement instrument was constructed and validated. Compared with other scales, a new aspect is the substantially broader spectrum covered. Moreover, various topical areas of environmental concern (e.g., residential energy conservation, environmentally aware purchasing, recycling of solid wastes, and so forth) can be measured simultaneously with the well-established conceptual variables (knowledge, attitude, behavior).

Research on environmental concern has consistently found that women have modestly stronger pro-environmental values, beliefs, and attitudes than do men. Scholars have proposed and examined several explanations and have found that only a few hypotheses receive somewhat consistent empirical support, including the institutional trust hypothesis. Given that recent research suggests that men and women have equivalent levels of trust in social institutions, we chose to revisit the institutional trust hypothesis. We use a structural equation modeling technique on General Social Survey data from 2000 and 2010. In both years, we found that women report greater pro-environmental views and concern about environmental problems than do men. Yet, we found only minimal gender differences in institutional trust and no evidence that institutional trust mediates the relationship between gender and environmental concern. Our study does not support the institutional trust hypothesis. We end by identifying potential implications of our findings and suggestions for future research.

Relatively little information yet exists regarding gender differences in environmental concern and activism. What information is available has so far provided a mixed picture, with some studies indicating men to be more concerned than women, others indicating women to be more concerned, and still others finding no significant differences. This study provides additional evidence from national survey data. From these data, women were found to express greater concern for the environment than men before and after applying multivariate controls for age, education, labor force/homemaker status, and other variables. However, the magnitude of the differences was not great. Gender differences in environmental activism provided an ironic contrast. Even though women indicated somewhat greater concern, rates of environmental activism for women were substantially lower than for men. Furthermore, these differences were greater than differences in rates of general political participation and persisted in spite ...

The end of the twentieth century was characterized by a surge of interest in the impact of gender on environmental politics. Many people assert that women have a special relationship with the environment, leading to a link being assumed between women and environmental issuses in development planning. This article analyzes this assertion cross-culturally and, using field data from both North America and the global South as illustration, engages with a long-standing set of debates concerning the relationship between agency, structure, knowledge, and power and the ways in which these relationships have been opera-tionalized and conceptualized.

Urban‐rural differences in environmental concern are the primary way that place has been conceptualized within the social bases of environmental concern framework, yet there has been little convergence in empirical findings to support such differences. We assess the influence of place of permanent residence and other sociodemographic measures of the social bases of environmental concern approach alongside two social‐psychological constructs: place attachment and place outlook. Our work focuses on second homeowners in three rural, natural amenity communities of the northeastern United States (n = 405). Second homeowners who permanently reside in rural places exhibited lower levels of local environmental concern about their second home area than suburban and urban residents, when “rural” was defined at the county scale. We did not observe differences in local environmental concern based upon urban‐suburban‐rural permanent residence when place of permanent residence was defined at the tract, block group, or zip code levels. Place attachment and place outlook explain more variance in local environmental concern than all sociodemographic indicators combined. Our findings suggest that second homeowners' local environmental concern is not strongly or consistently shaped by the urbanity or rurality of their permanent residence, but that place‐based, social‐psychological constructs may offer mechanisms through which social‐structural forces shape environmental concern.

As in many nations, air pollution linked to rapid industrialization is a public health and environmental concern in Malaysia, especially in cities. Understanding awareness of air pollution and support for environmental protection from the general public is essential for informing governmental approaches to dealing with this problem. This study presents a cross-sectional survey conducted in the Klang Valley and Iskandar conurbations to examine urban Malaysians’ perception, awareness and opinions of air pollution. The survey was conducted in two languages, English and Malay, and administered through the online survey research software, Qualtrics. The survey consisted of three sections, where we collected sociodemographic information, information on the public perception of air quality and the causes of air pollution, information on public awareness of air pollution and its related impacts, and information on attitudes towards environmental protection. Of 214 respondents, over 60% were positive towards the air quality at both study sites despite the presence of harmful levels of air pollution. The air in the Klang Valley was perceived to be slightly more polluted and causing greater health issues. Overall, the majority of respondents were aware that motor vehicles represent the primary pollution source, yet private transport was still the preferred choice of transportation mode. A generally positive approach towards environmental protection emerged from the data. However, participants showed stronger agreement with protection actions that do not involve individual effort. Nonetheless, we found that certain segments of the sample (people owning more than three vehicles per household and those with relatives who suffered from respiratory diseases) were significantly more willing to personally pay for environmental protection compared to others. Implications point to the need for actions for spreading awareness of air pollution to the overall population, especially with regards to its health risks, as well as strategies for increasing the perception of behavioural control, especially with regards to motor vehicles’ usage.

This study draws on social identity theory to explain differences in individual support for environmental protection, a conative component of environmental concern. It argues that an individual’s identification with higher social units—community, nation, and world—strengthens its in-group solidarity and empathy and, in consequence, its readiness to protect the environment benefiting the in-group’s welfare. The study hypothesizes that country-level manifestations of social identity (a) lift individuals’ support for environmental protection above the level that their own social identity suggests (elevator effect) and (b) reinforce the effect of individuals’ social identity on their support for environmental protection (amplifier effect). Using a sample of more than 30,000 individuals located in 38 countries around the world, the study finds strong evidence for the two contextual effects. The findings indicate that social identity plays an important role not just as an individual attribute but also as a central component of culture in fostering environmental concern.