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Personality traits, migration intentions, and cultural distance

2019; Elsevier BV; Volume: 98; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/pirs.12468

1435-5957

Didier Fouarge, Merve Nezihe Özer, Philipp Seegers,

Migration and Labor Dynamics

This paper investigates the relationship between Big Five personality traits and individuals' intentions to migrate in countries that vary in their culture. Using data collected from university students in Germany, we find that extraversion and openness are positively associated with migration intentions, while agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability negatively relate to migration intentions. Openness positively and extraversion negatively relate to the willingness to move to culturally distant countries after controlling for geographic distance and economic differences between countries. Extravert and conscientious individuals are less likely to prefer linguistically distant countries contrary to agreeable individuals. Este artículo investiga la relación entre los rasgos de personalidad de los Cinco Grandes y las intenciones de los individuos de emigrar a países con culturas diferentes. Utilizando datos obtenidos de estudiantes universitarios en Alemania, se encontró que la extraversión y el talante abierto se asocian positivamente con las intenciones de migración, mientras que la afabilidad, la diligencia y la estabilidad emocional se relacionan negativamente con las intenciones de migración. La apertura y la extraversión se relacionan de forma positiva y negativa, respectivamente, con la voluntad de emigrar a países culturalmente distantes, una vez controladas la distancia geográfica y las diferencias económicas entre países. Los individuos extrovertidos y concienzudos son menos propensos a preferir países lingüísticamente distantes que los individuos afables. 本稿では、ビッグ・ファイブ・パーソナリティ特性と文化的に異なる国に移住する個人の意思との関連性を検討する。ドイツの大学生のデータから、移住の意思と外向性 (extraversion)および開放性 (openness)に正の関連が、協調性 (agreeableness)、誠実性 (conscientiousness)、情緒安定性 (emotional stability)とは負の関連が認められた。2国間の地理的距離と経済的な違いで調整した場合では、文化的な違いのある国への移住意思と開放性は正の関連、外向性は負の関連を示した。外向的で誠実な人は、協調的な人とは反対に、言語が大きく異なる国を選考する傾向が弱い。 In neoclassical economic literature, labour migration is theorized as an investment decision driven by human capital characteristics of individuals and expected wage gains (Massey et al., 1993). Despite the significant impact of economic differentials between regions on individuals' decision to migrate, these differentials are not sufficient to explain why some individuals migrate while others do not, even if they share the same socio-demographic characteristics and the same prospects for economic gains upon migration. This is because the decision to migrate is a complex process that is also influenced by non-economic factors such as social networks (Manchin & Orazbayev, 2018), cultural differences (Belot & Ederveen, 2012) and individuals' perception of potential costs and benefits of migration (Bauernschuster, Falck, Heblich, Suedekum, & Lameli, 2014). These perceptions are shaped by preferences (Bauernschuster et al., 2014; Czaika, 2012; Groenewold, Bruijn, & Bilsborrow, 2012) and psychological dispositions (Fawcett, 1985). Personality traits are influential in a large array of economic decisions and behaviours (Becker, Deckers, Dohmen, Falk, & Kosse, 2012) but have been overlooked in economic models of migration. This paper contributes to this thin literature by investigating the relation between personality traits and individuals' intentions to migrate to culturally different alternative destinations. This paper hypothesizes that individuals' personality traits affect the way they weigh the psychic costs and benefits of migrating to alternative locations. Using rich data that cover German students, we test to what extent personality traits relate to migration intentions and the country-location choice. Alternative locations differ in their economic (e.g., growth rates, employment opportunities) and non-economic characteristics (e.g., culture). The attractiveness of high-income regions with better employment opportunities is well documented in the literature (Bertoli, Fernández-Huertas Moraga, & Ortega, 2013; Czaika & Parsons, 2017; Mayda, 2010; Pedersen, Pytlikova, & Smith, 2008). Compared to such traditional economic motives, culture as one of the non-economic dimensions influencing the attractiveness of alternative destinations for potential migrants, has a non-negligible impact on migration flows. Cultural boundaries can be a barrier to migration even across regions within the same country (Falck, Heblich, Lameli, & Südekum, 2012). Although Bauernschuster et al. (2014) show that educational attainment increases individuals' likelihood to cross these boundaries, the findings of Buenstorf, Geissler, and Krabel (2016) demonstrated that university graduates in Germany tend to prefer regions for their first job that are similar to their home region in terms of settlement type and dialect. Culture might weigh even more in the context of international migration, as cultural differences across countries are larger than that across regions of a country. Belot and Ederveen (2012) quantified the importance of economic and cultural differentials across countries in explaining migration flows. They found that a 1% higher GDP per capita and 1% lower unemployment rate in the destination country increase migration flows across OECD countries by 0.6% and 0.21%, respectively. The authors further show that a 1% increase in cultural distance lowers migration flows by 0.33%, which is a substantial effect when compared to traditional economic factors such as unemployment rate differentials. Hence, culture might be a justified candidate to further explain migration flows within the Global North. However, little is known about how cultural differences are subjectively evaluated by individuals with different personalities. For example, one could expect that individuals scoring high on openness to new experiences (one of the Big Five personality traits) have a more positive perception of the net benefits of migrating to culturally more remote regions. 2 Answering this question is important for two reasons. First, considering that this paper investigates the intentions of university students to migrate for work after graduation, out-migration of university graduates whose studies are financed by regional sources puts a pressure on local governments. 3 Not only countries but also regions are competing for talent to promote regional development (Florida, 2002; Hooijen, Meng, Reinold, & Siegel, 2017). Regional resources invested in higher education to attract bright youth may not be redeemed if graduates leave to other regions for work after graduation (Coniglio & Prota, 2008; Venhorst, Van Dijk, & Van Wissen, 2010). Even potential positive spillover effects of a region's financing higher education on other regions' economies may be lost due to the brain drain from the region in case of international out-migration. In this respect, investigating the underlying mechanisms of young graduates' emigration in a comprehensive manner is crucial from a regional perspective. Second, examining the underlying mechanisms of location choice in the context of international migration helps us to gain insights about how immigrants are self-selected and sorted into alternative destinations, and the implications of this sorting for the integration in culturally different environments. To the best of our knowledge, Ayhan, Gatskova, and Lehmann (2017) and Bütikofer and Peri (2017) are the only papers addressing the role of personality in migration decisions with an economic outlook. Ayhan et al. (2017) found that openness is positively associated with a higher propensity of migration from rural to urban areas while conscientiousness is negatively related to rural–urban migration in Ukraine. They also found a negative relation between extraversion and propensity to migrate from rural areas to cities. Bütikofer and Peri (2017) analysed the migration patterns of Norwegian male population born in 1932–1933 enlisted for military service using two non-cognitive skills called adaptability and sociability. They found that adaptability skills have a strong impact on migration. Although the latter of these two studies included an analysis for emigration from Norway, both focused on internal migration and treat location choice as a preference over different administrative units within a country. Our analyses pertain to migration from Germany to other regions in the world. Migration psychology literature provides a more extensive treatment on the relation between personality traits and migration. There is a consensus in this literature on the positive association between migration and openness and extraversion (Camperio Ciani, Capiluppi, Veronese, & Sartori, 2007; Canache, Hayes, Mondak, & Wals, 2013; Jokela, 2009; Jokela, Elovainio, Kivimäki, & Keltikangas-Järvinen, 2008; Paulauskaitė, Šeibokaitė, & Endriulaitienė, 2010; Silventoinen et al., 2008). However, evidence for other traits is ambiguous. Paulauskaitė et al. (2010) found a negative relation between conscientiousness and the intention to emigrate, while Jokela (2009) did not find such a significant association. Similarly, Paulauskaitė et al. (2010) did not find a relation between the intention to migrate and agreeableness while Jokela (2009) show that less agreeable individuals are more likely to migrate. Moreover, Huang, Chi, and Lawler (2005) found that agreeableness is positively associated with adaptation to local community once migration occurred. For neuroticism, Silventoinen et al. (2008) and Jokela et al. (2008) found a positive relation with the intention to migrate while Jokela (2009) did not find a significant association. Although migration decisions involve the choice of where to move, fewer studies addressed the potential role of personality traits on location choices. Jokela et al. (2008) found that highly sociable (i.e., extravert) individuals are more likely to migrate longer distances and to prefer urban areas while highly emotional (i.e., neurotic) individuals tend to migrate shorter distances. Murray et al. (2005) found that individuals living in highly accessible locations in Australia (where opportunities for social interaction and services are more abundant) have higher levels of openness and extraversion. In these papers, either preferences over different administrative units to live or geographic distance is used as proxies of location choice. However, these proxies do not fully capture the potential costs associated with migrating to culturally distant locations since they only account for geographic distance. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to investigate the association between personality traits and the perception of alternative destination countries based on cultural distance. We test the hypothesis that personality traits are related to the migration decision using the Fachkraft data gathered among students at German universities in March 2015. Students were asked whether they want to work abroad after they graduate and, if yes, in which country. 4 The survey also includes a fifty item IPIP Big Five personality test (Goldberg, 1992). We estimate two models to test the relation between the various facets of personality and students' migration intentions and their preferences over alternative destinations that we characterize based on cultural distance. We construct a measure of cultural distance using Hofstede national culture dimensions indicating cultural difference between Germany and the countries students prefer to work. Our results show that being more extravert and open to new experiences is associated with stronger intentions to migrate while being more agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable is correlated with lower migration intentions. We show that openness positively and extraversion negatively relate to the willingness to move to countries culturally more remote, even when we control for geographic distance and economic differences between countries. Our robustness checks using language distance show that extravert and conscientious individuals are significantly less likely to prefer countries where German and English are not official languages and that more agreeable students are more likely to consider these countries as alternative destinations. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a conceptual framework for our hypotheses. Our data and estimation strategy are introduced in Section 3 and Section 4, respectively. Section 5 presents the estimation results. Section 6 provides a discussion of our findings and concludes the paper. Economic theory suggests that individuals decide to migrate by comparing their expected lifetime utility in their current location with that in alternative destinations net of costs associated with their location decision. Differentials in economic prospects between the region of origin and destination have been put forward as motives for migration in standard economic models of migration (Harris & Todaro, 1970). In line with Sjaastad (1962) who pointed at the psychological costs of leaving friends and family, we conceptualize the role of personality traits in the cost–benefit analysis of migration. In doing this, we follow the line of reasoning provided by Almlund, Duckworth, Heckman, and Kautz (2011) and Borghans, Duckworth, Heckman, and ter Weel (2008) who suggest that personality can be incorporated into the individual decision mechanism through constraints, preferences, and expectations. Individuals differ in their personality traits which may lead to different constraints (Borghans et al., 2008). Having specific personality traits may constitute a constraint by affecting the costs associated with migration decisions which leads individuals to make different migration decisions and choose different locations. Migration involves both monetary and non-monetary costs that differ across alternative destinations. According to Sjaastad (1962), monetary costs represent the out-of-pocket money spent for travelling and relocation and costs of gathering information. Such costs depend on socio-economic characteristics such as education and cognitive ability. 5 Non-monetary costs involve psychic costs due to leaving a familiar surrounding behind, building up new social relations abroad, and adaptation to a new social and cultural environment. Such costs can be determined by the same factors that affect monetary costs. For example, Bauernschuster et al. (2014) found that highly educated individuals more easily adapt to culturally different environments than those with lower educational attainments. We hypothesize that non-monetary costs are a function of personality traits. The level of psychic costs may vary across individuals since they may differently perceive these costs due to their personality traits. Preferences and expectations are the other two channels through which personality traits may affect migration decision and location choice. 6 If having specific traits make individuals less risk averse or less impatient, then those traits may lead to a higher likelihood of migration. 7 Furthermore, migration decisions depend on how expectations about potential outcomes in alternative locations are constructed. Formation of expectations is based on how individuals perceive and process information which is affected by personality traits in different ways (Almlund et al., 2011). For instance, people more open to new experiences gather more information (Almlund et al., 2011). Depending on their personality and how they construct their information set, individuals may well predict, inflate, or deflate the benefits expected to be obtained in alternative locations, which, in turn, may affect their decision. Considering that personality traits enter into the decision mechanism via expected benefits and/or perceived costs, we expect the following relations between the decision to migrate to culturally distant destinations and the Big Five personality traits. Extravert individuals are described by characteristics such as being talkative, sociable, enterprising, adventurous, and optimistic (Goldberg, 1990). Moving to another place means a person's leaving her social network behind and building up a new network in the new location. Thus, being sociable, talkative, and enterprising makes it more likely to be more willing to migrate to new social circles. Furthermore, being optimistic may make extraverts more confident about their potential outcomes in the new location as they may tend to be overconfident in assessing their performance in tasks (Schaefer, Williams, Goodie, & Campbell, 2004). In this respect, extraverts are expected to be more likely to migrate and this has been found in several studies (Canache et al., 2013; Jokela, 2009; Jokela et al., 2008; Silventoinen et al., 2008). Jokela et al. (2008) found that high sociability is related to moving to urban areas and longer distances although they did not distinguish geographic and cultural distance. Because extraverts are more adventurous and optimistic, this could result in the fact that they perceive the psychic costs of migration to be lower or the expected utility to be higher in case of moving to a culturally distant destination. This trait refers to characteristics such as being friendly, respectful, adaptable, and flexible (Goldberg, 1990). Jokela (2009) show that more agreeable individuals are more likely to have strong ties within their community. As agreeable individuals tend to internalize the values and norms of their local community, this makes them less likely to migrate. However, once they decide to migrate, more agreeable people can perceive the psychic costs of moving to culturally distant regions to be lower. Huang et al. (2005) indeed show that more agreeable expatriates better integrate to the local community in their destination country. Hence, there are two opposing effects in the relation between agreeableness and migration. On the one hand, agreeable individuals may perceive costs of leaving their community behind to be higher and therefore be less likely to migrate. On the other hand, they may perceive psychic costs to be lower once they start to live in a different location, as they are more flexible and adaptable to other cultures. This trait is characterized by being organized, systematic, responsible, predictable, and conventional (Goldberg, 1990). Conscientious individuals, just like extraverts, tend to be overconfident in assessing their performance (Schaefer et al., 2004). Although this characteristic is expected to make them predict their expected utility in an alternative location to be higher, other traits associated with conscientiousness may decrease the likelihood of such individuals to migrate. As predictability and order are important to them, conscientious people may perceive the psychic costs of migration to be higher as it involves uncertainties. Moreover, Paulauskaitė et al. (2010) argued that conscientious individuals are less willing to migrate as they may feel more responsible for their family and community. Therefore, we expect to find a negative association between conscientiousness and willingness to migrate. Huang et al. (2005) suggested that more conscientious expatriates are more likely to experience difficulties with integration, as they perceive the new environment to be unpredictable. As cultural dissimilarity increases, unforeseen circumstances a potential migrant may experience also increase. Hence, if they migrate, conscientious people are expected to migrate to destinations that are culturally similar to their region of origin. This trait is associated with characteristics such as being calm, peaceful, balanced, and confident. Neuroticism, the opposite of emotional stability, is related to being anxious, nervous, fearful, and negativistic (Goldberg, 1990). At first sight, it seems that emotionally stable individuals may be more likely to migrate as being stable and confident may make them better able at dealing with uncertainties associated with migration. However, Silventoinen et al. (2008) and Jokela et al. (2008) found a positive relation between neuroticism and migration. These findings may be driven by neurotic people having lower job satisfaction (Van Den Berg & Feij, 1993) and lower neighborhood satisfaction (Jokela et al., 2008). Hence, the sign of the relation between emotional stability and migration is hard to predict. Furthermore, Jokela et al. (2008) found that higher neuroticism is correlated with a lower geographical distance migrated. The authors hypothesized that neurotics may avoid long distance migration due to their tendency to feel distressed. In terms of cultural distance, two opposing effects can be expected. If proneness to anxiety and fear is dominant in neurotics, then emotionally stable individuals are expected to move to culturally more distant regions compared to neurotic individuals. However, if dissatisfaction with current location prevails in neurotics, then emotionally stable individuals may be less likely to move to culturally distant regions. Individuals who are open to new experiences are characterized by being inventive, curious, and cosmopolitan (Goldberg, 1990). As migration is essentially an experience full of novelty in terms of location, social networks, and culture, open individuals are expected to be more willing to experience it. As in other studies (Canache et al., 2013; Jokela, 2009; Paulauskaitė et al., 2010), we therefore expect to find a positive association between migration and openness. It is also straightforward to expect a positive correlation between cultural distance and openness for at least two reasons. First, because open individuals are more curious, they may search more and construct a more accurate information set (Almlund et al., 2011) leading them to more accurately predict their utility in a different location. Second, because open individuals are curious about novelties, they may perceive psychic costs of adaptation to be lower as culturally different locations may be even more attractive to them. In brief, we expect more extravert, less agreeable, less conscientious, and more open individuals to be more likely to report migration intentions. Furthermore, we expect more extravert, more agreeable, less conscientious, and more open individuals to move to culturally distant locations as individuals having these traits may either consider a broader choice set when making their decisions or predict a higher expected utility in case of moving to an alternative location. We do not have a clear prediction for emotional stability as the results depend on which of the opposing effects mentioned above dominates. We use the Fachkraft data to test our hypotheses. It is a biannual survey conducted by Maastricht University in co-operation with Studitemps GmbH among students at German universities. The survey aims to gather information on general study characteristics, the part-time student job market, and students' future career expectations. Data is gathered online through Jobmensa, which is the largest student network in Germany for student jobs and internships and has more than 400,000 users. Questionnaires are filled in via the survey hosting service called FluidSurveys. Data collection started in September 2012. We used the data from round six conducted in March 2015. University students using Jobmensa received an invitation via email to participate to the survey. Of these students, 7% participated in the survey in March 2015 and 61% of them completed the main questionnaire. Although participation is incentivized, the response rate is low. Nevertheless, the sample is representative for the student population: the distribution of observable characteristics in the Fachkraft data does not differ substantially from the Sozialerhebung, 8 another large-scale German survey among students having a systematic sample and conducted regularly at German universities by the government (Bergerhoff, Hartmann, & Seegers, 2015). Particularly, the distribution of students across regions (i.e., German federal states) and study fields are the same in both surveys and close to the population distribution reported by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis). Furthermore, both surveys provide similar estimates for the share of students who work during their study. Additionally, 20% (19%) of the students reported that their fathers (mothers) were not born in Germany in the 2012 wave of the Sozialerhebung, which is quite similar to the immigration background of the students in the Fachkraft sample. However, both the Fachkraft and the Sozialerhebung overrepresent females (i.e., 60/40) in comparison to the Destatis statistics (i.e., 50/50), and the distribution of students by age in the Fachkraft slightly differs from those reported by the Sozialerhebung and the Destatis. The mean age of the students in our sample is below the median age reported by the Destatis (i.e., 23.5) and the mean age in the 2012 wave of the Sozialerhebung (i.e., 24.4). It is because the Fachkraft survey is sent through an online platform where mainly student jobs and internships are posted. The Fachkraft survey includes a question on where university students want to work after their graduation. 9 Students are provided with a binary response option where they can choose either Germany or abroad. Our first outcome variable, intention to migrate, is based on the responses given to this question. This variable reflects stated preferences of students rather than their actual behaviour. There are different standpoints across disciplines on how intentions relate to actual behaviour. Intentions are considered as an integral part of decision making process in sociological and psychological theories of mobility (DaVanzo, 1980; Fawcett, 1985). This strand of literature assumes sequential decisions for mobility where the intention to move is followed by actual move (Lu, 1999). In economics, research traditionally focuses on actual behaviour rather than intentions. This is because individuals' preferences are believed to be revealed by their actual behaviour but not to be fully reflected by their intentions (DaVanzo, 1980). Nevertheless, the use of stated preferences in several subfields of economics has become common as stated preferences allow to simulate market setting and to model choices by fully observing the alternatives (Sund, 2010). According to the theory of reasoned action by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975), acting depends on the intention to act which is determined by beliefs about and evaluation of the consequences of acting and one's motivation to comply with these beliefs. Especially international migration is a complex process, which requires extensive preparation to gather information regarding the destination country, to find a job and accommodation, and to deal with bureaucratic processes such as obtaining a visa or residence permit. In this respect, intention to migrate may indicate future actual migration if it includes motivation to prepare for it. While intentions are informative for actual behaviour, research shows that there is no one-to-one correspondence between intention to migrate and actual migration. Van Dalen and Henkens (2013) found that 34% of native Dutch residents who stated their willingness to emigrate actually moved abroad in the following five years after their first survey. Thus, we should note that our results should not be directly translated to realized migration. Students who stated their intention to work abroad are also asked which country they would like to move to. Using this information, and following Hofstede (2001), we constructed our second dependent variable, cultural distance, as the cultural difference between Germany and the preferred country of migration that the students indicated. Hofstede (2001) defines culture as "collective mental programmes" reflected by values and behaviours of individuals living in a society which differentiate them from the members of another society. Hofstede's initial four-dimensional taxonomy 10 is based on a survey on values conducted among employees of the International Business Machines (IBM), a large multinational company, around the world between 1967 and 1973. Since then the survey (recently called Values Survey Module) has been conducted in many other countries and the most recent data is published on Hofstede's website. Hofstede's national culture dimensions are a standard in literature, and used in many research fields in economics, psychology, sociology, international marketing, and management (Søndergaard, 1994; Steenkamp, 2001). We think that the Hofstede framework provides an appropriate measure of cultural difference for our study. Hofstede and McCrae (2004) show that Big Five personality traits are correlated with national culture dimensions. Their findings indicate that individuals' personality is to a certain extent linked to the "collective mental programmes" of the societies they live in. In this respect, the deviation of an individual's personality traits from the average traits observed in a society may be a good predictor of how much a person is likely to move to culturally distant countries. The Fachkraft survey includes the fifty item IPIP Big Five personality test based on Goldberg (1992) and Goldberg et al. (2006). Our key independent variables are the students' scores in five dimensions of personality constructed as follows: there are ten items for each personality trait consisting of five 'positive keyed' and five 'negative keyed' items that represent two poles of a trait. 11 Students are asked to assess to what extent a given item reflects their personality on a five-point Likert scale ranging from very inaccurate to very accurate. This scale is scored from one to five for positive keyed items and from five to one for negative keyed items. We obtained students' total scale score by summing all score numbers assigned to