Examining Gender Differences in Environmental Concern in the Swedish General Public, 1990-2011

While numerous cross-sectional studies find modest gender differences in environmental concern within the general publics of North American and European countries, this pattern has not been examined over time—primarily due to a lack of suitable data. Using twenty-two years of nationally representative survey data from the Swedish general public, we test whether the theoretically expected relationship between gender and environmental concern—where women are modestly more proenvironmental than men—is robust over time. Results from our multivariate ordered logistic regression models reveal a consistent pattern over the time period. Across all available years of data, women report greater environmental concern than men in the Swedish general public. Specifically, Swedish women report greater worry about environmental destruction, greater worry about climate change, and greater support for environmental protection than men. Thus, this gender difference in environmental concern is indeed robust. The theoretically expected relationship between gender and environmental concern is robust not only across environmental concern indicators and countries of study but also over time.