Understanding male motivation for domestic or intimate partner violence is a vital component within the logic of change for reducing the incidence of abuse. This article analyzes male justifications for domestic violence using data from the Malawi 2015 Demographic and Health Survey. Five justifications for wife beating are recorded in the male survey, and we define agreement with any indicator as indicative of a justification of wife beating. Binary logistic regression is used to link both attitudinal and behavioral factors (alcohol consumption) to women's reports of wife beating. Male justification is only weakly related to the actual incidence of violence within the relationship: there is no association between attitudinal justification of wife beating and reported violence even in the absence of control variables. In contrast, alcohol utilization is strongly associated with the incidence of violence and is robust to controls. This suggests that directly targeting males through interventions designed to change attitude may have only limited success in reducing the incidence of intimate partner violence, and that behavioral change in the form of an antialcohol strategy would be a more productive intervention.

中文翻译：

---

马拉维殴妻事件：男性态度重要吗？

了解男性对家庭或亲密伴侣暴力的动机是减少虐待发生率的变革逻辑中的一个重要组成部分。本文使用马拉维 2015 年人口与健康调查的数据分析男性对家庭暴力的理由。男性调查中记录了五种殴打妻子的理由，我们将与任何指标的一致定义为表明殴打妻子的理由。二元逻辑回归用于将态度和行为因素（酒精消费）与妇女殴打妻子的报告联系起来。男性辩护与关系中暴力的实际发生率仅微弱相关：即使在没有控制变量的情况下，殴打妻子的态度辩护与报告的暴力之间也没有关联。相比之下，酒精的使用与暴力事件的发生密切相关，并且可以很好地加以控制。这表明，通过旨在改变态度的干预措施直接针对男性在减少亲密伴侣暴力发生率方面取得的成功可能有限，而以戒酒策略形式的行为改变将是一种更有成效的干预措施。