I once asked a colleague why this was the case, and the responses I got were basically "Wood is cheap, durable and we have lots of it. Other materials will price houses out of most Americans and there's no tangible benefit to using them anyway."

Which is both wrong and short sighted, but I could not get them to budge on acknowledging that other materials would actually be better for houses than wood and some foam.

You can actually search around on the Internet for this query as well and American stubbornness (/ exceptionalism?) once again rears it's head.