Abstract:
In the modern era, the focus of people's attention to politics has shifted from public spheres to private spheres, from collective affiliations to personal affiliations, and from unifying ideologies to individual identities. On the other hand, new politics propose a form of participation that challenges the legitimacy of existing structures through existing communication channels. In this context, one of the forms of new politics is political consumerism. Political consumers are individuals who choose the goods and services they need based on the political and ethical considerations of their society – and not the goods themselves. The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between gender and the political consumerism of citizens of Sabzevar city. The research method used to collect and analyze data is a survey method. This study was conducted on 416 women and men in Sabzevar city. A questionnaire was used to collect information, the validity of which was measured by formal method and its reliability by Cronbach's alpha statistic. Considering three aspects of political consumerism, namely behaviors, motivations, and habits, it is observed that there is a significant difference in the level of political consumerism between male and female respondents, and women are more inclined to use political consumerism to influence public decisions in society.
Machine summary:
Considering three aspects of political consumerism – behaviors, motivations, and habits – it is observed that there is a significant difference in the level of political consumerism among male and female respondents, and women are more inclined to use political consumerism to influence public decision-making in society.
From this point of view, the reason for women's greater participation in the process of political consumerism is that they are more concerned about the effects of consumer goods on social and family values [8].
Perhaps one reason for this is that gender roles often place women in a position where they are more interested in political consumerism than men, as women and mothers are more concerned than men about the harmful effects of some consumer goods on families and the values of their children [1] and this probably causes women to be more influenced by post-material policies, which emphasize human and value issues, than other groups in society; policies that, in turn, can lead people to also lean towards certain groups – new left groups – politically [3].
The results, consistent with the findings of Micheletti and colleagues and other researchers, show that in the statistical population under consideration, women are more inclined towards political consumerism than men in all three dimensions of behavior, motivation, and habit, and they take it into account when buying or not buying certain goods.
(
, 
, 
)
