Gender and climate action

It is well-known that men and women differ in their views regarding the severity of climate change, but do they also differ in their support for climate policy and in undertaking climate action in their everyday lives? Previous survey evidence on these questions is inconclusive, but we can answer them using unique survey data from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). Regression analysis confirms that Swedish women believe more strongly than men that climate change will affect Sweden. Furthermore, women engage in more climate-mitigating behavior than men, even conditional on climate beliefs. The association between gender and climate policy support is less robust, and disappears altogether when climate beliefs are controlled for, demonstrating that climate beliefs are the main mechanism explaining the relationship between gender and policy support.