Author: Emma    Oppewall

Major: Anthropology

Graduation Year: 2016

Thesis Advisor: Cindy Isenhour

Description of Publication: In the following study I will examine the relationship between gender and motivation for participation in Maine’s reuse economy with the ultimate goal of taking the beginning steps required to understand one of the many intersectional motivational factors that drive Maine’s people to participate in reuse. It is imperative that we improve our understanding of reuse, roughly 29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from the provisioning of goods (EPA, 2009), and many leading experts claim that an increased dependency on reused items is extremely important to our long-term environmental well being (US EPA, 2015; EEA, 2014). For the purposes of this study, we define Maine’s reuse economy as being comprised of businesses primarily involved in the sale of reused goods. In order to accomplish this goal, I will examine the relationship between gender and pro-environmental behavior as it is documented in existing literature. Second I will discuss the potential benefits associated with strengthening the reuse economy, and finally, I will look at any possible correlations between gender and environmental motivation for participation the reuse economy here in the state of Maine. To address my first and second points of interest I conduct a review of peer-reviewed sources published within the last 20 years. To address my final point of interest I use data collected from my own research designed and conducted over the last year with the help of my Advisor Dr. Cindy Isenhour. The final results of this study indicate that while women do generally exhibit pro-environmental behavior more than men and reuse is certainly a pro-environmental behavior, female participants in Maine’s reuse economy are not primarily motivated by environmental concerns. Based on the results of my research it would also appear that participation in Maine’s reuse economy is not highly gendered. This means that, based on our sample population, people participating in Maine’s reuse economy do not appear to be largely more female than male or vice versa. The implication of this finding is largely positive. Since we did not find that reuse in Maine only appealed to one gender, we can hope to promote it among both genders and subsequently reach a wider pool of individuals.

Location of Publication:

• fogler
• reynolds

URL to Thesis: