Does Personality Influence Project Participation? Evidence from Rural Malawi

Development projects often target the poor and vulnerable households for good reasons. However, project participation also tends to be voluntary leading to a high degree of self-selection among project bene ciaries. In addition, project success is likely to depend upon the type of people participating in it. There is a large and still growing literature on how personality traits matter for economic and social outcomes in life. In this paper, we find that there is indeed a strong degree of self-selection on speci c personality traits, when it comes to expressing interest in participating in an announced upcoming village savings and loan association (VSLA) in rural Malawi, a largely economic decision