Personal traits and individual choices: Taking action in economic and non-economic decisions

•We compare the role of personal traits in economic and non-economic choices.•The choice to opt out relates to different individual traits for different decisions.•Financially sophisticated individuals take action in economic choices.•Procrastinators tend to choose the no-action default in non-economic decisions.•Those who care about the opinion of other people do vote and are often organ donors.

In a large number of decisions, the option that does not require a specific action such as filling in a form is chosen frequently. It is a stylized fact that opt-in or opt-out designs for otherwise identical choices lead to vastly different outcomes. Choice options are chosen more frequently simply because they are the no-action alternative or default option. However, direct empirical evidence on the reasons for the popularity of defaults is scarce. We devised a special survey module for the Dutch DNB Household Survey to study potential explanations for default choices. We find that the popularity of the default option is related to different personal traits in economic and non-economic decisions. Financially literate individuals are more likely to take action and opt out the default option in economic decision-making. In non-economic decisions, procrastination increases the popularity of the default while individuals who care much about the opinion of others are more inclined to deviate from the default.