Despite overwhelming evidence, many citizens remain skeptical of the human impact on the earth’s ecology, whereas others show a deeper environmental concern. These different reactions to climate change, ranging from denial and skepticism to belief and concern, are often attributed to interindividual differences in environmental knowledge and attitudes, trust in science and politics, and even political ideology. This paper instead focuses on a more fundamental aspect of individuals’ character. It examines the relationship between personality and long-term environmental policy preferences in a deliberative experiment. The central question of this paper is whether personality traits, both at the individual and the group level, can explain citizens’ preferences for long-term environmental policies, and changes in those preferences. Based on a deliberative experiment, in which a random selection of 330 American subjects was asked to discuss climate change and possible long-term policy solutions to the disruption of the Earth’s ecosystems, we will argue that personality traits and group personality composition are strongly related to environmental policy preferences. In particular we will argue that that extraversion, neuroticism and agreeableness are significantly related to support for the gas tax policy at the individual level, whereas openness, conscientiousness and tolerance for disagreement play a role at the group level.
