4 research outputs found
Personality trait effects on green household installations
Large, one-time investments in green energy installations effectively reduce domestic energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Despite long-term economic benefits for households, the rate of green investments often remains moderate unless supported by financial subsidies. Beyond financial considerations, green investments may also be driven by individual psychological factors. The current study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (N = 3,468) to analyse whether the household decision to invest in green energy installations is linked to the Big Five personality traits. Personality traits and domestic investments in solar and other alternative energy systems had weak indirect associations through environmental concern but not through risk preferences. Openness to Experience and Neuroticism showed a weak positive relationship with green energy installations through the environmental concern channel, whereas Extraversion had a weak negative link. Based on these findings, persuasive messaging for green investments may be more effective when it focuses on environmental concern rather than reduced risk in countries like Germany, where long-standing financial subsidies decreased the risk in green investments.</jats:p
Recommended from our members
The role of personality traits in green decision-making
This paper investigates whether personality traits play a significant role in the decision to invest in energy efficiency in the residential sector. Using the data from the Understanding Society UK survey, we apply structural equation modelling to examine if the Big Five personality traits help explain why certain individuals choose to invest in energy efficiency measures while others do not, even under nearly identical financial conditions. The results show that personality traits affect one-time, high-cost energy efficiency investments indirectly through environmental attitudes and risk preferences. However, low-cost pro-environmental habits, such as conserving energy and buying ‘green’ products, are mediated only through the environmental attitude, but not through the risk preference channel. This is consistent with the fact that these everyday choices carry a much lower financial risk than an expensive energy efficiency investment. The findings illustrate that personality traits may pose a barrier to reducing energy consumption in the residential sector and underline the need for creating differentiated and targeted products and policies.Ante Busic-Sontic would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of Land Economy, Cambridge for his PhD research and Franz Fuerst the continuous and generous support of the Cambridge University Land Society in enabling his research activities
Recommended from our members
Does your personality shape your reaction to your neighbours’ behaviour? A spatial study of the diffusion of solar panels
Fostering investments in green technologies through social norms is a cost-effective alternative to financial incentives. The success of energy efficiency programmes incorporating social influence methods depends on the extent to which individuals in a social system consider peer behaviour in their decisions. This study investigates the impact of geographical concentrations of personality traits on peer effects for solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Using data on the Big Five personality traits of 375,000 individuals and adoptions of solar PV systems across 2600 postcode districts in the UK, a first-difference fixed effect regression model is estimated to analyse the link between the personality traits and the peer effects. The results suggest that districts with spatial concentrations of Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness exhibit stronger peer effects, but only under settings of low financial subsidies for solar PV systems