Personality traits and village cadre adoption of rural environmental protection measures: a case study from China

Abstract

Strengthening rural environmental protection measures is a requirement for improving agricultural production conditions, protecting rural living environments and ensuring public health in rural areas. Village cadres (leaders of the village) play a key role as decision makers. To provide insight into the effect of village cadre personality traits (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) on the adoption of rural environmental protection measures, we use data from a questionnaire survey of village cadres in Liaoning Province in China in 2017. According to our results, 88.9% of villages adopt environmental protection measures. Specifically, we find that village cadres with a higher level of agreeableness and neuroticism are more likely to adopt environmental protection measures. Our findings suggest that considering personality traits in the selection criteria for village cadres will be beneficial for the execution of village projects.

Keywords:

• personality traits
• village cadres
• environmental protection measures
• adoption behavior

Disclosure statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71573179], [71903133] and [71973100].