Reversing the political gender gap, women boycott "evil" products more often than men, partly because they have "nicer" personality traits

Explaining the Reversed Gender Gap in Political Consumerism: Personality Traits as Significant Mediators. Birte Gundelach  Deborah Kalte. Swiss Political Science Review, January 22 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12429

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 socio‐economic 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.