The impact of personality on the propensity of carpooling to work

This study aims to test the sensitivity of five personality tendencies to levers of carpooling to work. We launched a large-scale online questionnaire targeting daily car drivers in France (N = 1,134 respondents) to test the link between levers to engage in carpooling (environmental awareness, confidence in others, relationship to time, economic gain and easy access to carpooling) and five personality tendencies of car drivers’ (feeling of ecological responsibility/ FER, social affinity as a measure of level of extraversion/ SA, saving time tendency to individual with a time-pressure sensitivity/ ST, sensitivity to reward/ SR, and technophilia/ TECH). Respondents were questioned about their home-to-work carpooling habits and motives, their preferences according to some carpooling options, their assessments of a new carpooling to work concept and their projected use of it. The results show a strong link between the five chosen personality tendencies and carpooling practice, perception and overall acceptance, except for the sensitivity to reward (SR). Economic gain is a strong lever for the entire population, and this must be maintained for all and rendered more visible. Our results also reveal that a carpooling to work service, adaptable to all the driver’s requests at each step of carpooling would meet the various needs of the different personality tendencies. In addition, a carpooling application must allow adaptability to specific personality tendencies (FER, ST, SA as a minimum) regarding the choices to be made at each stage of carpooling, while ensuring user-friendliness to facilitate access to those who are least comfortable with new technologies.