Given the task definition and input, reply with output. In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.


  
 (Washington Post illustration; iStock) 
  
 Researchers have known for decades that women tend to beat men on environmental metrics. They generally use less fuel and energy. They eat less meat. They're more concerned about climate change. 
  
 James Wilkie, a business professor at the University of Notre Dame, wanted to understand what drives this gender eco-friendliness gap. After years of exploring psychological bias, he and his colleagues developed a theory. 
  
 "Men’s resistance may stem in part from a prevalent association between the concepts of greenness and femininity and a corresponding stereotype (held by both men and women) that green consumers are feminine," they assert this month in the Journal of Consumer Research. "As a result of this stereotype, men may be motivated to avoid or even oppose green behaviors in order to safeguard their gender identity." 
  
 The researchers conducted a set of experiments, each designed to gauge if we actually do ascribe gender to green products and whether such perceptions impact our willingness to use them. They found people consistently connect environmentally conscious goods to their idea of femininity. 
  
 [Is a vegetarian diet really better for the environment? Science takes aim at conventional wisdom.] 
  
 The first survey of 127 college students asked respondents if they thought green products appeared masculine, feminine or neither. Most participants, both men and women, said items designed to protect the planet seemed feminine. 
  
 Another group of 194 students took an online quiz instructing them to imagine two grocery store shoppers, one carrying a green reusable bag and another toting a plastic sack. The quiz asked: Which seemed more eco-friendly, wasteful, masculine and/or feminine? The green shoppers seemed to respondents more eco-friendly and feminine, regardless of their gender. The plastic shoppers came off as more wasteful and masculine. 
  
 The researchers next gave a group of men phony gift cards and told them to pick from a selection of batteries, which included a green option. In both a faux Walmart and an online shopping scenario, the men avoided the green choice. “Self-perceptions of femininity suggest that threats may also influence private behavior,” the authors wrote. 
  
 Wilkie’s team also found men in the studies were more likely to donate to an environmental nonprofit group that had a “masculine” logo — one with darker colors and bold fonts — than to an organization that displayed lighter tones and “frilly” letters. Logos didn’t have an impact on where women said they’d want to donate. 
  
 A similar trend emerged in an experiment at a BMW dealership. When presented with two versions of the same “green” car, men favored the one called the “Protection Model” over the “Eco-friendly Model.” Women, meanwhile, weren’t particularly swayed by either title. 
  
 “Stereotypical feminine behavior and attitudes are more in parallel with taking care of the environment,” Wilkie said of the findings. “Male traits tend to conflict with this idea of maintaining a nice environment for other people.” 
  
 Wilkie blames stereotypes. People who care about the environment are perceived as nurturing, gentle caretakers. Pop culture says they're barefoot hippies with long hair and flower crowns. That image clashes with traditional masculinity. 
  
 Previous research, Wilkie noted, suggests that men are socially penalized more for breaking gender norms when it comes to the products they use — or even the drinks they order. “If a man at a bar were to order a girlie drink, he might get some looks,” Wilkie said. “He might get some snickers. He might even get into a fight.” 
  
 [New study finds that men are often their own favorite experts on any given subject] 
  
 A woman requesting something that reads masculine, such as, say, a whiskey on the rocks, probably wouldn’t encounter that problem. “Some people might even be impressed,” he said. 
  
  
  
 Carrie Preston, director of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Program at Boston University, said it’s concerning that feminine-seeming goods or actions repel some men. “That says what’s feminine is bad, is lesser, is second class,” she said. “Although men’s and women’s roles have changed significantly, masculinity hasn’t changed as much.” 
  
 Caring about what people think of your drink choice or grocery bag may seem silly. There’s nothing inherently feminine about recycling, and some would argue that femininity itself (and how it’s marketed) is a cultural creation. Still, a 2011 survey from the global marketing firm Ogilvy and Mather found 82 percent of adults in a nationally representative sample said “going green” is more ladylike than manly. 
  
 Marketers are unlikely to shatter gender expectations overnight — or nix the belief that feminine is lesser — but a packaging or messaging tweak could draw more men to the green movement. 
  
 "Despite a prevalent stereotype that green consumers are more feminine than non-green consumers," the researchers wrote, "we show that men’s inhibitions about engaging in green behavior can be mitigated through masculine affirmation and masculine branding." 
  
 More from Wonkblog: 
  
 How America fell in love with crazy amounts of air conditioning 
  
 Today's men are not nearly as strong as their dads were, researchers say 
  
 Stop pretending we can fix the environment by curbing population growth 
  
 The green movement has a Millennial problem ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Studies show that men are not as environmentally friendly as women. Let’s face it, not too many “man caves” feature solar panels, recycle bins or posters of electric cars. It’s just not manly. 
  
 But could men be persuaded to go green? New research indicates the answer is yes — and it’s all about branding. 
  
 The study “Is Eco-Friendly Unmanly? The Green-Feminine Stereotype and Its Effect on Sustainable Consumption,” forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research by James Wilkie, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, provides evidence that shoppers who engage in green behaviors are stereotyped by others as more feminine and also see themselves as more feminine. In a series of seven studies, Wilkie and his co-authors manipulated small details about the products, attempting to change men’s attitudes and behaviors. They found that men are more open to purchasing environmental products if their masculinity gets a branding boost. 
  
 “Previous research shows that men tend to be more concerned about maintaining a masculine identity than women are with their feminine identity,” Wilkie says. “We therefore thought that men might be more open to environmental products if we made them feel secure in their masculinity, so they are less threatened by adopting a green product.” 
  
 They used two approaches — affirming a man’s masculinity before introducing him to environmental products and changing the associations people have toward green products. 
  
 “We documented how both men and women find green products and actions to be feminine,” Wilkie says. “We thought that if you reframe environmental products to be more masculine, men would be more likely to adopt them. Instead of using traditional marketing messages about green products (which are typically perceived as feminine), we changed the messages to be more masculine in nature by changing the phrasing, colors, etc. When we did that, we found that men were more willing to ‘go green.’” 
  
 One study was conducted in China at a BMW dealership and focused on a model known for being an eco-friendly car. While surveying shoppers, the researchers simply changed the name of the car from the traditional, environmentally friendly name to “Protection,” which is a masculine term in China. Despite all other descriptions of the car remaining the same, the name change did increase men’s interest in the car. 
  
 In another study, the team compared men’s and women’s willingness to donate to green charities. They called one “Friends of Nature,” with a bright green logo featuring a tree. The second was named “Wilderness Rangers” showcasing a wolf howling to the moon. Women favored the more traditional green marketing, while more men were drawn to the masculine branding over the traditional. 
  
 Wilkie proposes marketers mimic successful approaches in other products to combat feminine stereotypes. 
  
 “Body wash used to be considered a very feminine product, but companies changed that perception by marketing their products in a more masculine fashion,” Wilkie says. “They used more masculine fonts and colors in packaging and hired very masculine spokesmen, explicitly stating that the product was for men only. It worked — as it also did for diet soft drinks. Again, there was a perception that ‘diet’ products were for women. Marketers changed their phrasing to ‘zero-calorie’ drinks. Pepsi Max stated that it was the ‘first diet cola for men’ and Dr. Pepper 10 warned, ‘It’s not for women.’ 
  
 “These campaigns appeared to get more men to purchase the product, yet did not scare away women. We think that green products can be successfully marketed in the same way.” 
  
 Co-authors of the study include Aaron Brough, Utah State University; Jingjing Ma, Peking University; Mathew Isaac, Seattle University; and David Gal, University of Illinois at Chicago. 
  
 Contact: James Wilkie, 574-631-5171, jwilkie@nd.edu |||||

A business professor recently set out to learn what is driving one longstanding gender gap. Women tend to be more environmentally conscious than men on all kinds of levels, from energy use to concern about climate change, reports the Washington Post. So Notre Dame business professor James Wilkie conducted seven experiments to see whether men "avoid or even oppose green behaviors in order to safeguard their gender identity." The short answer, he reports in the Journal of Consumer Research, is a resounding yes. Being "green" is equated with being feminine, and men tend to shy away from it. However, Wilkie and his team suggest this can be changed with the right branding, per a Notre Dame press release. For example, men were more likely to donate to eco-friendly groups with more masculine logos. "Stereotypical feminine behavior and attitudes are more in parallel with taking care of the environment," Wilkie says. "Male traits tend to conflict with this idea of maintaining a nice environment for other people." He goes so far as to suggest that men tend to be punished more than women for breaking gender norms—a man might get teased for ordering a "girlie drink," which could lead to a fight—and thus may be protecting their gender identity not just for the sake of how they are viewed but for their own safety. The researchers point to products like body wash and diet colas that now have masculine branding, which simultaneously does not deter female consumers. So the bottom line, for the sake of the environment? If men are more secure in their manliness, they'll be "less threatened by adopting a green product." (Here's why some men lie about their athleticism.)