Explaining the Reversed Gender Gap in Political Consumerism: Personality Traits as Significant Mediators

Abstract

Research on political consumerism documents a persistent reversed gender gap, as women boycott and buycott products more often than men. Previous efforts to explain the reversed gender gap rely on classical theoretical models developed to illuminate gender differences in political participation in general. Accounting for socioeconomic and situational factors as well as socialization leaves a significant amount of the reversed gender gap unexplained, though. Adhering to recent empirical evidence of personality as an important factor influencing political behavior, we argue that gender differences in personality traits could provide an alternative explanation to account for gender disparities in political consumerism. We use original survey data specially designed to measure political consumerism in Switzerland, which also include the Big Five model of personality. We find empirical evidence that gender differences in personality traits, in particular agreeableness, explain a significant portion of the reversed gender gap in political consumerism.

Do Intensive Public Debates on Direct-Democratic Ballots Narrow the Gender Gap in Social Media Use?

“…In addition, women lag when it comes to numerous types of traditional political participation in the offline domain. While they tend to participate more in private and individual ways (see Gundelach & Kalte, 2021), collective and conventional forms of public engagement are more prevalent among men (Coffé & Bolzendahl, 2010).…”

The gender gap in pro‐environmental political participation among older adults

“…To explain this gender gap in environmental sustainability behaviours, prior research has looked at differences in personality traits between women and men (Gundelach & Kalte, 2021). For instance, women are, on average, more prosocial, altruistic, and empathetic, and these attitudes have been linked to women's tendency towards environmentalism (Dietz et al, 2002).…”

“…We included variables associated with preferences for the environment or generally featured as control variables in studies of political participation, such as age, education, income, and whether the respondent lives alone 11 (see, e.g. Gundelach & Kalte, 2021). We also controlled for attitudinal variables that have been found to impact -or are expected to impact -an individual's propensity to exhibit pro-environmental behaviours, including political ideology (Neumayer, 2004), climate worry, the belief that individual involvement can mitigate climate change, and a sense of duty to fight climate change.…”

“…This literature has rarely considered contentious political action in favour of the environment. The existing gender gap literature addresses different forms of political participation (Coffé & Bolzendahl, 2010; Engeli et al, 2006; Gundelach & Kalte, 2021; Lorenzini & Bassoli, 2015; Verba et al, 1997), demonstrating important variations in the engagement of women and men in different forms of political participation. However, previous research on the political engagement of older adults tends to focus on institutional political participation (Serrat et al, 2020), with only a few studies comparing different forms of participation (Kam et al, 1999; Quintelier, 2007).…”

Boycotting and buycotting food: new forms of political activism in Spain

“…The various studies that have looked at political consumption highlight certain sociodemographic and attitudinal factors as identifying the citizens who engage in this type of action. A large majority of them are women Ferrer-Fons and Fraile, 2006;Acik, 2013;Gundelach and Kalte, 2021), young Acik, 2013) and with a high level of education (Neilson and Paxton, 2010;Newman and Bartels, 2011). In contrast, income appears to be of little or no importance in being a political consumer, according to some studies (Tobiasen, 2005;Copeland, 2014); however, other research concludes that income level correlates with the probability of buycotting and that the probability of buycotting also correlates positively with education level (Koos, 2012, p. 47;Stolle and Micheletti, 2005, p. 46).…”