Personal traits underlying environmental preferences: a discrete choice experiment

PLoS One. 2014 Feb 20;9(2):e89603. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089603. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Personality plays a role in human behavior, and thus can influence consumer decisions on environmental goods and services. This paper analyses the influence of the big five personality dimensions (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness) in a discrete choice experiment dealing with preferences for the development of an environmental program for forest management in Spain. For this purpose, a reduced version of the Big Five Inventory survey (the BFI-10) is implemented. Results show a positive effect of openness and extraversion and a negative effect of agreeableness and neuroticism in consumers' preferences for this environmental program. Moreover, results from a latent class model show that personal traits help to explain preference heterogeneity.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Anxiety Disorders*
  • Choice Behavior*
  • Extraversion, Psychological*
  • Humans
  • Neuroticism
  • Personality Assessment
  • Personality*
  • Phenotype
  • Social Environment*
  • Spain
  • Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

Financial support from the SUDOE Interreg IV B – UE/EU FEDER/ERDF program (project SUST-FOREST, ref. SOE2/P2/E261) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (project AVEHETERO, ref. ECO2010-22037) is acknowledged. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.