Urban psychology and British cities: Do personality traits matter for resilience to recessions?

Harry Garretsen, Janka Stoker, Dimitrios Soudis, Ron Martin and Jason Rentfrow
Additional contact information
Harry Garretsen: Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen
Janka Stoker: Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen
Dimitrios Soudis: Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen
Ron Martin: Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
Jason Rentfrow: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge

Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal, 2020, vol. 13, issue 3, 290-307

Abstract: There has been much recent interest in the ‘resilience’ of cities (and regions) to shocks of various kinds. Studies have found, for example, that cities (and regions) appear to have different degrees of resistance to and recoverability from economic shocks, such as major recessions.1–3 In this paper we explore whether and to what extent the clustered personality traits of a city’s population, as measured by the so-called ‘Big Five’ traits, might be relevant to explaining these differences. The paper utilises the personality scores of more than 400,000 UK residents across some 63 cities to examine how far variations in these scores help to account for differences in how those cities have reacted to major recessions. We find that for the three recessionary shocks in our sample period, the trait openness (to experience) has a strong significant relationship with city resilience. Cities with a higher degree of openness to experience turn out to be more resilient to UK-wide recessionary shocks. These results also hold when account is taken for the age and location of birth of a city’s residents. We also briefly discuss potential policy implications.

Keywords: UK cities; resilience; recessions; personality traits; Big Five; regions; psychology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R00 Z33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hstalks.com/article/5424/download/ (application/pdf)
https://hstalks.com/article/5424/ (text/html)
Requires a paid subscription for full access.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aza:jurr00:y:2020:v:13:i:3:p:290-307

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal from Henry Stewart Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Henry Stewart Talks ().