Conference Agenda

Climate change is increasingly recognized as a critical global challenge and important environmental stressor. The literature highlights the importance of incorporating gender analysis into climate research, as gender relations shape social transformations associated with climate change. While multiple studies confirm women’s stronger pro-environmental attitudes and greater willingness to act, as well as women’s stronger belief in the anthropogenic causes of climate change, others show no statistically significant gender-based differences in climate change perceptions or public opinion about climate change taxes and laws. The aim of this study is to assess gender-based differences in climate change attitudes in 27 countries. In our research we rely on survey data and use econometric techniques appropriate for ordinal data. We run logit and ordered logit regressions to explain the role of gender in shaping attitudes towards climate change controlling for several other socio-demographic factors. We find that that women and men have rather different attitudes towards climate change. In particular, women express higher concerns about climate change than men, and they tend to feel more personal responsibility for climate change mitigation. We also document cross-country heterogeneity in gender differences in climate change awareness and differences in determinants of knowledge and feelings about climate change among women and men analyzed in separate regressions.