Facing Change Again: Meta-Analyses of Gender and Climate Change Attitudes Worldwide

As the need to address climate change grows increasingly pressing, so doesthe need for understanding the factors that undermine public support for mit-igation. One prominent recent analysis of three cross-national surveys arguesthat people—especially men—in richer countries express less concern for cli-mate change and see more costs and fewer benefits to mitigation, pointing tocompensation as a potential solution. Drawing on hundreds of surveys, thisreassessment employs a series of meta-analyses to reveal that while genderdifferences in climate concern are indeed larger in richer countries, both menand women express more concern in such settings relative to poorer countries,and there is no relationship between economic development and gender differ-ences in mitigation’s perceived costs and benefits. Instead, gender differencesin climate concern are mirrored in differences in concern across a wide arrayof risks, consistent with more widespread masculine performative fearlessnessin richer countries.