Explaining Water Conservation Behaviour with the Big Five Personality Traits

Abstract

Climate change has led to increased levels of water scarcity around the globe and heightens the attention paid to the importance of water conservation. Water conservation behaviour, just like other behaviours, is likely to be affected by personality psychology, specifically the Big Five personality traits. However, the current scholarly understanding of how peoples’ intentions toward water conservation are affected by their personality traits is limited. The current research helps close this knowledge gap by clarifying how people vary in their intentions toward water conservation and how differences in their personality traits are related to the observed variation in their water conservation behaviour intentions. In pursuit of this goal, the current study examined the relationship between the Big Five personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) and water conservation intent and, used the Theory of Planned Behaviour as an analytical framework. Data were collected with an online survey of students at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The results suggest significant relationships between various Big Five personality traits and several of the Theory of Planned Behaviour constructs. These relationships were tested for demographic effects (i.e., program of study and gender) on their strength or direction. However, the results indicate that most of the relationships were not affected by demographic variables, suggesting that the identified relationships are universal based on the survey population and investigated demographic variables. The results from this study further our understanding of the factors that affect water conservation behaviour.