Men avoid eco-friendly behavior to feel more ‘manly,’ study finds

LOGAN — If you want to help your husband finally distinguish between the trash can and the recycling bin, make him feel more manly, according to a recent study at Utah State University.

Men often avoid eco-friendly behaviors and products to feel more masculine, according to research co-authored by Utah State University associate professor Aaron Brough. “Going green” has a pervasive feminine stereotype, and men tend to reject eco-friendly habits — especially if they feel their masculinity is threatened, Brough said.

Previous studies have found that women are more likely to make eco-friendly decisions, and most researchers attribute this penchant for green behavior to personality differences — like the tendency to think ahead or nurture. But Brough said this study goes a little further.

“We started doing some tests and that’s where it started to get kind of fun,” Brough said. “We threatened men’s gender identity, made them feel less masculine, and that influenced their choices to the extent that they were making non-eco-friendly choices in order to restore this macho image.”

During one experiment, Brough and his colleagues gave half of the men in the study a gift card decorated with flowers and bright, pink colors. The other half received a gift card with a joke about their age. The men were then asked to choose between a series of eco-friendly and non-eco-friendly products. The men with the flowery gift card were significantly less likely to choose the eco-friendly products.

“Men are concerned, much more so than women, in maintaining their gender identity,” Brough said. “They don’t want to make decisions or act in a way that would undermine their feeling of masculinity to the extent that they perceive green products to be more feminine, and they’re more reluctant to consume those products or engage in those behaviors.”

Men who feel secure in their masculinity, however, have no problem engaging in green behavior, Brough said.

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In a second experiment, the researchers gave men a handwriting test and told them they had an algorithm that could predict gender based on handwriting. The researchers then told half the men that their handwriting was off-the-charts masculine. The other half received no feedback.

Both groups of men were then asked to rate an eco-friendly product. The men who were told that their handwriting was extremely masculine rated the product significantly higher than the other half that received no feedback.

“If you affirm men’s sense of masculinity, then they’re totally comfortable expressing a preference for green products, and, likewise, if you take an eco-friendly product and rebrand it in a more masculine way, then men are more comfortable with it,” Brough explained.

Brough and his colleagues worked with BMW in China to test this finding by rebranding an eco-friendly car with a Chinese word that, roughly translated, means “protection.” Men were significantly more likely to test drive and give the eco-friendly car a high rating after the rebranding, Brough said.

While Brough said the study did not delve into the reasons why eco-friendly behavior is perceived as more feminine — and thus avoided by men — he believes it may be because eco-friendly products tend to be in product categories that are often targeted at women. The messaging, advertising and even the fonts and coloring of these product categories are geared toward attracting the female sex.

Brough also believes it may be because women are much more commonly observed engaging in green behavior.

“It is a fact that women do engage in more eco-friendly behaviors than men," he said. "They litter less, they recycle more, and so it’s an association that’s kind of residual from that observation.”

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