 40. A Geographical Perspective on Personality Traits 831
ployment rates to understand the structure 
of economies. However, growing interest 
in economics is focusing on the impact that 
“intangible factors,” such as creativity and 
trust, can have on regional economics. For 
example, Florida (2002, 2008) conducted 
a considerable amount of work concerned 
with regional variation in creative innova -
tion, with the goal of understanding why 
certain regions are more economically 
prosperous than others. The key finding to 
emerge is that diversity within regions fuels 
creative innovation and economic growth; 
part of the explanation for this effect is that 
creative people are attracted to regions that 
are diverse and vibrant, because such places 
are stimulating. Another part of the explana -
tion is that individuals who live in diverse re -
gions are more likely to have regular contact 
with people from different cultures, ethnici -
ties, sexual orientations, and backgrounds, 
which broadens individuals’ worldviews and 
promotes divergent thinking. As a result, 
diverse areas accrue creative capital by way 
of selective migration and social influence, 
which contributes to innovation, creates 
jobs, and generates wealth.
In many ways, creative capital is psy -
chological in nature, because it is based on 
concepts of imagination, curiosity, and tol -
erance, which are core aspects of openness. 
It thus seems reasonable to expect creative 
capital to be linked to regional variation in 
openness. Consistent with this expectation, 
state- and city-level analyses suggest that 
regions high in openness have large propor -
tions of high-tech firms, patents, artists, en -
tertainers, foreign-  born residents, and same-
sex couples (Rentfrow, 2011; Rentfrow et 
al., 2008). For example, regions that have 
large shares of creative industries (e.g., San 
Francisco, California; Cambridge, Massa -
chusetts; Austin, TX) also rank at the top 
on openness. As a check on the robustness 
of such state-level findings, Rentfrow et al. 
(2013) analyzed the links between economic 
innovation and state-level personality as -
sessed in five different samples. Openness 
emerged as a positive predictor of innova -
tion in all five samples. Overall, the findings 
suggest that openness in regions is associ -
ated with social tolerance, self-  expression, 
and creativity, which might foster innova -
tion and prosperity.In a related line of research, Obschonka, 
Schmitt-  Rodermund, Silbereisen, Gosling, 
and Potter (2013) investigated whether the 
prevalence of individuals with an entrepre -
neurial psychological profile (defined by 
high openness, conscientiousness, and ex -
traversion, and low neuroticism and agree -
ableness) is associated with regional eco -
nomic prosperity. Results from the United 
States, the United Kingdom, and Germany 
converged, indicating that rates of innova -
tion were greater in regions with large pro -
portions of people with the entrepreneurial 
personality profile. In a subsequent study, 
Obschonka and colleagues (2015) examined 
whether the prevalence of certain personal -
ity traits interacts with knowledge resources 
(e.g., human capital, industry structure) to 
impact economic innovation; regions with 
a high prevalence of people with entrepre -
neurial psychological profiles and high lev -
els of knowledge resources displayed signifi -
cantly greater innovation compared to other 
regions. Collectively, such studies make a 
compelling case for integrating psychologi -
cal and economic theories to understanding 
economic innovation.
The psychological profiles of regions are 
important not just for creative capital and 
innovation. Research by Garretsen, Stoker, 
Soudis, Martin, and Rentfrow (2019) shows 
that personality differences can add to our 
understanding of local differences in eco -
nomic structure and performance. By ex -
amining the personalities and economic 
structures of 63 British cities, they found 
that regional variation in personality traits 
add explanatory power over and above more 
standard determinants of city-level economic 
outcomes. More specifically, the results indi -
cated that (1) economic structure, in terms 
of the relative importance of manufacturing 
or services employment, was associated with 
many of the Big Five traits, (2) measures of 
economic resilience were strongly associated 
with city-level openness, and (3) city-level 
neuroticism has had long-term effects on re -
gional economic performance.
Taken together, research on regional per -
sonality variation has the potential to com -
bine with research on economic geography 
to broaden our understanding of the deter -
minants of economic activity and perfor -
mance across regions.