On Effects of Personality Traits on Travelers’ Heterogeneous Preferences: Insights from a Case Study in Urumqi, China

Abstract

Personality is a psychological concept which reflects people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In this sense, it is straightforward to state that people’s behavior is fundamentally affected by their personalities. However, the concept of personality is rarely considered in most travel behavior studies. Given this fact, this paper aims to investigate the effect of personality traits on travelers’ heterogeneous preferences in the context of air itinerary choice. To this end, travelers’ stated choices for air itinerary and information reflecting travelers’ personality traits were collected. After defining specific personality traits based on the collected data, a hybrid choice model with interaction effects between travelers’ personality traits/socio-demographic characteristics and alternative-specific attributes were established and estimated and next the contributions of personality traits and socio-demographic characteristics to travelers’ choice behavior were compared and analyzed. The results confirmed the effects of personality traits on travelers’ heterogeneous preferences. However, the results also revealed that the magnitudes of such effects are not as great as the effects of socio-demographic characteristics.