**5. Discussion**

### *5.1. The Impacts of Personality Traits*

The results of the current study sugges<sup>t</sup> that the influence of Agreeableness and Neuroticism on energy conservation behavioral attitudes and intentions less depends on the external environment. These two "energy-saving personality traits" can work as predictors reflecting overall energy-saving attitudes. However, the relationships between some personality traits, such as Openness and Extraversion, and energy-saving personality only become significant with some specific external environment. Those personality traits may predict the energy-saving potentials of individuals in some specific situations. The study finds that Agreeableness and Neuroticism are significantly correlated with both HESB and OESB attitudes. These findings indicate that the impacts of Agreeableness and Neuroticism on energy-saving attitude might not depend on the surrounding environment. The positive correlation between Agreeableness and energy-saving attitude is in line with previous studies on the personality basis of PEBs (such as [15,25,27]). Agreeable people are more likely to present stronger empathic concern [71] and tend to consider collective interests and others' feelings. Individuals with higher Agreeableness levels might extend their empathic concerns to energy-saving. This is also supported by Berenguer [72] and Luch et al. [46], whose findings suggested that empathic concerns work positively in the environmental protection behavioral process. Surprisingly, Neuroticism presents significant but negative relationships with both HESB and OESB attitudes. This finding suggests that neurotic people present a weaker energy conservation attitude in both the o ffice and the family environment. Individuals with higher Neuroticism show higher tendency to present negative emotional characteristics, such as sensitivity, nervousness and insecurity [73]. Thus, emotional stability might play the role as the predictor of energy conservation intention. This is also supported by Chiang et al. [49] and Van Egeren [74], who believe that Neuroticism positively contributes to the external locus of control (ELC) while ELC is negatively related to PEB attitudes. People with stronger emotional uneasiness are more likely to be influenced by ELC.

The study results demonstrate a significant correlation between Extraversion and OESB attitude, which is consistent with some previous evidence that supports the positive correlation between Extraversion and OHPEB attitudes and intentions (such as [25] and [48]). However, the study also found that the e ffect of Extraversion on IESB attitude is small and less significant. Extroverts generally present stronger sociability [75]. Individuals with higher Extraversion tend to engage in specific behaviors to integrate into the collective. Previous studies also found that Extraversion is one of the predictors of country-level environmental engagemen<sup>t</sup> [30]. Further, Kamal and Barpanda [26] note that Extraversion bridges social aspiration and environmental concern. Compared with the o ffice, the family environment emphasizes privacy. At home, people receive fewer expectations and evaluations from others, and do not need to perform special actions for social engagement. This might partially explain the reason why people with higher Extraversion present higher energy-saving potential than others at the o ffice but not at home.

Openness only presents a significant correlation with HESB attitude. Openness reflects the degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity and a preference for novelty and variety of an individual. Therefore, people with a higher level of openness-to-experience are more natural to accept environmental protection concepts. Besides, people with higher openness are more likely to be interested in novel environmental-friendly technologies [41]. At home, more open individuals have more opportunities to practice di fferent environmental protection solutions or install novel environmental protection technologies. This might explain the significant correlation between Openness and household energy-e fficient technology installation attitudes in two studies in the UK [41] and China [42]. However, office facilities are relatively monotonous with complex rules. It could be di fficult for people to apply novel energy-saving ideas to the o ffice environment. This may limit the willingness of more open employees to save energy at the o ffice.

The results reveal that personality traits obviously influence the energy-saving process in both household and o ffice environments. The contributions of some specific personality traits to the pro-environmental attitude are not dependent on the situation and environment. Those personality traits can well predict the overall environmental protection intentions as well as the potentials of individuals. However, some personality characteristics are only able to predict the pro-environmental behavior in some specific situations. In addition, the researchers found out and thus prospect that it would be valuable to customize environmental protection schemes in the future: the same strategies are not suitable to apply to each individual or in each situation. It would be better to develop specific informatic interventions according to the personality characteristics of targets as well as the surrounding environment. Although the evaluation of personality and other demographic characteristics of each individual is a challenge to decision-makers, the e ffectiveness and e fficiency of those schemes would be highly strengthened by achieving the target for the individuals with the most substantial energy-saving potential and the targets who are able to save more with assistance. Besides, the findings in this study would provide references for behavior simulation in the built environment in further studies.
