Environmental sustainability and national personality

Previous research has linked higher levels of the personality traits Agreeableness and Openness with greater concern about environmental issues. While these traits are important predictors of environmental attitudes among individuals, a growing literature has begun examining the broader consequences of population differences in personality characteristics. The present study examines whether nationally-aggregated personality traits can be significant predictors of a country's environmental sustainability. National personality scores were derived from an existing database of 12,156 respondents across 51 countries and examined in relation to each country's scores on the Environmental Performance Index, a benchmark of the sustainability of a country's environmental policies. Just as Agreeableness and Openness predict environmental concern at the individual level, countries with higher population levels of Agreeableness and Openness had significantly better performance on the sustainability index. These results remained when controlling for national differences in wealth, education, and population size and were unique to these two traits.