Personality traits and willingness to pay for sustainability in supply chains

Supply chain and procurement professionals may play a crucial role in implementing sustainability across the supply chain. However, the role or influence of these professionals, specifically from psychological and behavioural perspectives, is not yet well-explored. We assess how the personality traits of procurement professionals influence willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainability. By using a dataset already employed for a related study, we test hypotheses drawn from the Five-Factor Model with a sample of 465 procurement professionals based in European countries through partial least squares structural equation modelling. We find that agreeableness and openness are significantly associated with WTP, which underscores the influence of these traits in actualizing sustainable procurement. To bolster sustainability in supply chains, companies should actively attract and cultivate individuals who exhibit high levels of agreeableness and openness, with an emphasis on fostering a sense of community and innovation, respectively. For managers, we advance our understanding of how individual-managerial factors contribute to fostering sustainability within companies. For theory, we contribute to the literature on micro-foundations and document that WTP is the result of both cognitive and behavioural-affective components of personality.