Personality traits and bidding behavior in competing auctions

•We study a model of English auctions with competing sellers.•We measure subjects' personality with the Big-Five Trait Taxonomy.•Personality has meaningful predictive power but only for female subjects.•Personality indirectly affects earnings through the choice of strategies.

We study strategic behavior in an “alternating recognition” model of English auctions with competing sellers, which mimics a structure that is common in online marketplaces such as eBay. To relate decision making in our experimental setting to individual differences, we measure subjects' personality with the Big-Five Trait Taxonomy. Our results suggest that personality has meaningful predictive power in explaining bidding behavior but only for female subjects. Further, females also earn more than males and the gender gap in earnings is large and significant. Finally, personality indirectly affects earnings through the choice of strategies but has no direct effect on earnings, controlling for strategies. This is an important result in that it demonstrates the mechanism through which personality matters in our setting.