September 2, 2020
Sarah Bush (Yale) and Amanda Clayton (Vanderbilt)
Facing Change: Identity and Cross-National Responses to Climate Change
Abstract
We uncover a new finding related to mass preferences on climate change: the wealthier the country, the more likely women are to express concern about climate change relative to men. Existing explanations for gender gaps in political preferences, such as gender differences in political ideology, work, and education, cannot explain this pattern. We propose a new theory about the perceived costs and benefits of policies designed to mitigate climate change. At the country level, the perceived benefits of climate change mitigation decrease with economic development, while the perceived costs increase. At the individual level, the perceived costs of climate change mitigation, both material and psychological, increase with economic development more for men than for women. The observable implications of the theory are supported through an analysis of existing survey data on climate change attitudes, an original ten-country survey of citizens in the Americas and Europe, and extensive focus group data from Peru and the United States. Beyond its implications for theory and policy related to climate change, the study contributes to the study of foreign economic policy preferences and gender and politics.