Does personality mediate the relationship between sex and environmentalism

Abstract The finding that females hold more pro-environmental attitudes and engage in more conservation behavior, relative to males, is one of the most robust effects in the field of environmental psychology. Yet sparse research has attempted to understand why males are less pro-environmental than females. In three studies, the present research tested the hypothesis that sex differences in personality account for sex (Studies 1–3) and gender (Study 3) differences in both pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. Results from Study 1 demonstrated that conscientiousness mediated links between sex and attitudes towards environmental utilization, protectionism, and conservation behavior in an undergraduate sample. Results from Study 2 with a community sample demonstrated that conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism mediated the link between sex and environmental protectionism. Study 3 replicated the mediating effect of conscientiousness on sex differences in environmental behavior using the HEXACO model and extended this finding beyond biological sex to gender differences. Taken together, results suggest that core differences in personality traits explain sex and gender differences in environmentalism, offering new insight into how to potentially promote increased pro-environmental action among men.