Psychological openness drives tech adoption
A new study of 3.2 million Americans suggests that a city’s willingness to try new things is associated with why certain technologies take root while others fail.
While we often blame income or internet speed for the digital divide, researchers found that personality traits influence how quickly a community embraces platforms like Uber or Airbnb.
The research, published in the journal Research Policy, analyzed data across 349 metropolitan areas in the lower 48 states. As Earth.com reported, the study identified “openness”—a psychological trait encompassing curiosity and a willingness to experiment—as the most reliable predictor of early technology adoption.
This isn't just about being “tech‑savvy.” The researchers found that openness remained a factor even after they accounted for education, wealth, age, and even access to high‑speed internet.
The data behind the digital divide
To get a clear picture of how these technologies actually spread, the research team led by Tobias Ebert of the University of St. Gallen and Martin Obschonka of the University of Amsterdam didn’t rely on self‑reported app usage. Instead, they turned to hard data, including tax records for businesses without employees in the accommodation and passenger transportation sectors.
By looking at these filings, the team could see exactly when people began registering as Airbnb hosts or Uber drivers. For Flickr, a photo‑sharing platform that peaked around 2008, they analyzed a massive sample of 80 million photos to see which regions were most active during the site’s early years.
The results showed a stark contrast between cities. In San Diego, for example, the number of new accommodation businesses per 100,000 residents was 9.5 in the five years after Airbnb launched. In Minneapolis, that number was only 2.2.
| Metric | High Openness Impact (per 100k residents) | Example Cities (Strong Adopters) | Example Cities (Weak Adopters) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Airbnb Hosts | +2.4 additional hosts | San Francisco, Portland, Austin | El Paso, Flint, Jackson |
| Ride‑share Drivers | +48 additional drivers | San Francisco, Portland, Austin | El Paso, Flint, Jackson |
| New York Scale (5 yr) | ~450 hosts / 9,000+ drivers | N/A | N/A |
The gap between the most and least open regions is wider than it looks on paper. While the average “openness” scores ranged from 3.48 in Bismarck, North Dakota, to 3.93 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the actual percentage of residents classified as “open” swung from just 21 % in some areas to 48 % in others.
The necessity of the first mover
The answer lies in the concept of network effects. For a platform like Uber to work, you need both drivers and riders; for Airbnb, you need hosts and guests. Someone has to be willing to step into the unknown to make the system functional for everyone else.
“Someone has to be willing to try a new behavior before everyone else regards it as normal,” said Martin Obschonka, of the Amsterdam Business School.
Obschonka noted that this willingness is vital for platforms that require a critical mass of local users, hosts, or content creators to become viable. If a city is hesitant to let strangers sleep in their spare rooms or ride in their personal cars, the platform simply cannot survive the “chicken and egg” problem of early growth.
This creates a self‑reinforcing cycle. Regions that are early adopters of one platform tend to be early adopters of others. The correlation between openness and adoption was approximately 0.4 for each individual platform and climbed to 0.49 when looking at all three combined.
Unanswered questions for the future
While the link between personality and technology is strong, the researchers are careful not to claim that openness is a magic wand. The study is a snapshot in time, and it doesn’t definitively prove that being an open person causes someone to download an app. It is possible that open people simply gravitate toward cities where these technologies are already established.
There are also significant gaps in what we currently understand. The study focused on the era of Airbnb, Uber, and Flickr, and the authors cautioned against directly extending these findings to other emerging technologies without further research.
