INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY TRAITS ON IMPULSIVE BUYING AND RESPONSIBLE FINANCIAL BEHAVIOR

Personality traits are one of the influencing factors of consumer behavior. In order to clearly understand and predict consumer behavior, the purpose of the research is to establish whether there is a relationship between personality traits and responsible consumer behavior. The connection was investigated based on the influence of personality traits on the affective and cognitive aspect of impulsive financial consumption behavior, the opposite of responsible consumer behavior. A quantitative research was conducted using a questionnaire on a convenient sample of 483 students of the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb. Research has shown that there is a statistically significant difference in degree of propensity for impulsive shopping considering dimensions of personality traits. It is concluded that conscientiousness is the best and only predictor of responsible consumer behavior, and a weak but statistically significant association with the cognitive aspect of impulsive buying. Affective consumer behavior is connected to extroversion and neuroticism, whereas neuroticism is negatively linked to impulsive behaviour. Given that the above-mentioned constructs have not been empirically linked so far, this paper can be used during market segmentation and while creating activities which target consumers with different personality traits but also to encourage responsible and correct and avoid irresponsible consumer behavior among young consumers.