Personality Traits

This entry presents a summary of the literature that analyzes the relationship between personality traits and consumption decisions. Such literature is still scant and fragmented, with very few studies that try to analyze this peculiar aspect in an organic way. For this reason, this entry proposes an unifying empirical framework for studying the impact of personality traits on household consumption choices that is based on well known theoretical results developed for introducing demographic factors in consumption demand. Further aspects that connect consumption and personality are analyzed in the entry: consumption complementarities within the household and intrahousehold distribution of resources. While for the former some empirical evidence exists in the literature, the latter has hardly been studied. We thus propose an empirical framework based on the collective consumption theory that considers personality traits as relevant distribution factors. An empirical application is provided as a guiding example for future research.