How the Big Five Personality Traits influence consumers’ Willingness to Pay for sustainable coffee

Abstract

During the last few decades, sustainability has become a global topic and we witnessed an increasing concern and awareness around environmental issues. As a result, a growing number of consumers have changed their purchasing habits and started buying more sustainable products in their daily lives. My thesis focuses on the analysis of sustainable coffee: over the years, the coffee industry has undertaken an intense campaign of collaborative initiatives along the supply chain, which has led coffee to become the first fully sustainably produced agricultural product. This industry has also been a pioneer in applying labels that indicate sustainable production. This study aims to detect and examine the relationship between the Willingness to Pay for sustainable coffee and consumers’ personality, analysed by means of the Big Five Personality Traits - Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism - and the construct of Product Involvement, treated as independent variables of my research model. This relationship has been supposed to be moderated by two variables: Impulsivity and Warm glow effect. The hypotheses have been tested through a quantitative research model: the survey I created registered 97 valid answers, and the hypothesised relationships have been analysed through the SEM-PLS technique. The results show how Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness are positively related to the Willingness to Pay more for sustainable coffee.