Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Public Relations Review

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pubrev

Full Length Article

Extrovert and engaged? Exploring the connection between

personality and involvement of stakeholders and the perceived
relationship investment of nonprofit organizations
⁎
Moonhee Choa, Giselle A. Augerb,
a
University of Tennessee, 476 Communications Building, Knoxville, TN 37996, United States
b
Rhode Island College, 600 Mount Pleasant Ave., Providence, RI, United States

AR TI CLE I NF O AB S T R A CT

Keywords: This study explored the relationship between the big five personality traits – agreeableness, in-
Big 5 personality traits tellect, conscientiousness, emotion, and extroversion – and the involvement, engagement, and
Perceived relationship investment perceived relationship investment (PRI) of participants with nonprofit organizations. The role of
Nonprofit organizations personality is important because it reflects fundamental qualities that may influence an in-
Engagement
dividual’s behavior. Results demonstrated significant correlation between each trait and in-
Involvement
volvement, passive engagement, and PRI. Four were also positively correlated to active en-
Micro-targeting
gagement of participants.

1. Introduction

There are nearly 1 million 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations in the U.S. – enough to suit a variety of individual interests and
passions (McKeever & Pettijohn, 2014) and with the ease of communicating via social media, most people receive messages from
nonprofits several times each day. These messages are usually received in individuals’ various social media feeds because they have
previously indicated interest in the organization by ‘liking’ or ‘friending’ or having ‘shared,’ ‘tweeted’ or ‘retweeted’ information
provided by that organization. This type of behavior indicates involvement with the organization, a form of relationship defined by
Hollebeek, Glynn, and Brodie (2014) in the social media context as that “which reflects a consumer’s level of interest in and personal
relevance of a brand” (p. 149).
Such relevance may be initiated by stakeholder’s perceptions of brand personality wherein characteristics normally attributed to
humans are applied to a brand and where the relevance of the brand deepens the more it helps stakeholders express their concept of
self (Malar, Krohmer, Hoyer, & Nyffenegger, 2011). Interestingly, though many have studied aspects of brand personality (Brakus,
Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009; Geuens, Weijters, & de Wulf, 2009; Malar et al., 2011; Sung, 2014) and despite the close ties between
perceived brand personality and the personality of the stakeholder, none have investigated implications of individual stakeholder’s
personality in the organization-public relationship. However, the potential importance of personality has recently become of interest
in the related area of political communication where political campaigns have been exploring the role of individual personality and
voting behavior in an effort to craft “specific messages tailored not to [voters’] age, race or gender—but to their fundamental natures”
(Goodwin, 2015, para. 5).
The purpose of this exploratory study was therefore to investigate the potential ties among stakeholder personality and in-
volvement with a nonprofit organizational brand, their social media behavior, and the perceived relationship investment of that

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: mcho4@utk.edu (M. Cho), gauger.ric@gmail.com (G.A. Auger).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.07.008
Received 22 December 2016; Received in revised form 21 June 2017; Accepted 25 July 2017
0363-8111/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Cho, M., Public Relations Review (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pubrev.2017.07.008
M. Cho, G.A. Auger Public Relations Review xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

organization. The research is important because differences in personality may account for differences in the extent of involvement
and engagement of stakeholders for example, the likelihood of volunteering or providing monetary donations, or simply the like-
lihood of sharing information provided by the organization via social media. This study is also significant in that it investigates
characteristics of stakeholders and their perception of organizational investment in the organization-public relationship rather than
characteristics of organizational behavior and will explore these characteristics and relationship in the nonprofit organization
context.

2. Literature review

2.1. Personality

According to Gill (2011), personality refers to “a person’s fundamental qualities that influence his or her behavior” (p. 250).
Among the most widely used personality assessment tools is that of the International Personality Inventory Pool (IPIP) a measure
defined by Goldberg (1999) as “a broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several
five-factor models” (p. 7). Frequently described as ‘the big five,’ the IPIP measures the extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability or neuroticism, and openness characteristics of personality. The IPIP has been used in more than 80 published
articles and scale items have been translated into more than 25 languages (Goldberg et al., 2006).
The five factors can be described as follows. Characteristics of extroversion include cheerfulness and optimism. People who are
high in extroversion tend to be sociable, talkative, active, and experience positive emotions (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010;
Moore & McElroy, 2012). Agreeableness describes those who are trusting, sympathetic, and cooperative, as well as flexible, kind, and
forgiving. Moore and McElroy (2012) argued that “agreeableness is said to favorably influence social interactions and their perceived
quality” (p. 269). Those with lesser levels of emotional stability are characterized as neurotic, a personality state defined by negative
attributes such as distrustful, sad, anxious, easily embarrassed, and those who have difficulty managing stress. Research has de-
monstrated that those high in neuroticism traits spend more time on social media sites than more emotionally stable people
(Moore & McElroy, 2012). Of the remaining two personality types, intellect or openness to experience has been defined as “an
individual’s willingness to consider alternative approaches, be intellectually curious, and enjoy artistic pursuits” (Amichai-Ham-
burger & Vinitzkey, 2010, p. 1290). Conscientiousness, on the other hand, refers to those who exhibit reliability, responsibility, self-
discipline, and who are diligent, responsible, and scrupulous.

2.2. Personality and social media

Although the big five personality factors have been extensively used to forecast individuals’ attitudes and behaviors in the
management and psychology disciplines (Moore & McElroy, 2012), only recently have researchers begun to examine the role of
personality and social networking sites (SNS). For the most part, these exploratory studies have focused on investigating personality
traits associated with individuals’ participation on SNS—in other words who is using SNS and participating in activities such as
posting photos or information, the number of friends with whom they have engaged, and the number of groups to which they belong,
rather than investigating individuals’ interactions with specific types of organizations or individuals on social media.
For example, Correa, Hinsley, and Zuniga (2010) found that those with high extroversion traits reported being more likely to post
information and photos on Facebook and to interact with friends on this social networking sites (SNS) than those with lower levels of
those traits. Moreover, among the more mature segment of their sample, ‘being open to new experiences’ was an important per-
sonality predictor of social media use. Additional studies have demonstrated that those with higher levels of neuroticism were more
likely to post photos on their profile pages on Facebook than those with lesser levels of those traits (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzkey,
2010) and those with higher agreeableness characteristics were more likely to express “higher levels of regret about inappropriate
content they may have posted on Facebook” (Moore & McElroy, 2012, p. 271). The latter study also found that conscientious people
expressed greater regret than less conscientious people and that they also posted significantly fewer posts about either themselves or
others. Interestingly, personality was not significantly related to an individual’s sensational, or unusually violent, interests as dis-
played on Facebook (Hagger-Johnson, Egan, & Stillwell, 2011).
Unfortunately, there is a dearth of studies that indicate individual personality characteristics and the individual’s relationships
with organizations. That said Moore and McElroy (2012) identified the importance of personality studies to organizational com-
munication when they noted:
Many businesses are changing the way they conduct their marketing activities through the use of Facebook as an advertising
vehicle, distribution channel, and to foster word-of-mouth referrals. The degree to which we can ferret out the relationship
between personality and Facebook offers companies valuable insight into the nature of who is likely to comment on company
Facebook sites about things such as product usage and quality and the extent of potential word of mouth advertising conveyed
through personal Facebook pages. (p. 273)

2.3. Involvement and social media engagement

The concepts of involvement and engagement are closely related and, depending on the definition, have been used inter-
changeably or to describe varying depths of the other; for example, engagement meaning a more in-depth or active level of

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involvement. Studies of each have stressed the importance of emotion and cognition, passive and active participation, or contributing
or consuming behaviors (Hollebeek et al., 2014; Smith & Gallicano, 2015; Tsai & Men, 2013; Zaichowsky, 1994).
For example, a study by Hollebeek et al. (2014) investigated consumer brand involvement with regard to interactive brand-
related dynamics in a social media context. According to the researchers, involvement in consumer/brand relationships is defined as
that “which reflects a consumer’s level of interest in and personal relevance of a brand” (p. 149). Once consumers actively interact
with organizations through social media, the passive but interested state of involvement becomes the active, engaged state of en-
gagement, which is turn leads to positive outcomes such as brand commitment. As Tsai and Men (2013) explain, “Because SNSs are
relationship centric and inherently participatory, engagement with SNS pages – including those of a brand – naturally leads to the
cultivation of meaningful relationships” (p. 77).
Passive and active engagement are described as a continuum of engagement levels by Tsai and Men (2013) wherein passive
engagement is least involved with the organizational relationship. Behaviors associated with this level are what the authors describe
as consuming behaviors such as “viewing videos and pictures, reading product reviews, and downloading brand widgets” (p. 77). At
the next level of engagement users become moderately active by contributing to an organization’s SNS page content such as parti-
cipating in polls, responding to content posted by others, or commenting on videos, photos or other items. At the final level of
engagement users are considered most active when they create and provide user-generated content such as photos, videos, reviews, or
other contributions to the organization’s SNS page (Tsai & Men, 2013).
Similarly, Men and Tsai (2013) measured participants’ levels and types of engagement with corporate social media in what they
defined as proactive ‘contributing’ or reactive ‘consuming’ behavior. Results of the study found the participants were more reactive
than proactive in their social media engagement, using the medium for gathering information rather than for uploading user-gen-
erated content. Such behavior, however, was consistent with the “collectivist, cultural orientation” of the country in which the study
was conducted (p. 268).
More recently, Smith and Gallicano (2015) suggested that engagement in social media “is conceptually distinct, and involves
cognitive and emotional immersion that may not characterize all social media usage” (p. 82). The authors contended one must
interact on social media to be engaged yet interacting on social media does not necessarily mean that the person is engaged – to be
engaged one must be cognitively immersed and absorbed in the interaction.
These arguments are similar to those used more than two decades earlier by Zaichkowsky (1994) in developing the Personal
Involvement Inventory (PII), which also considered the role of cognition and emotion. According to this study, an individual’s
feelings and emotions contributed to what they described as affective involvement, while cognitive involvement stressed the in-
dividual’s information processing. Moreover, three antecedent factors—characteristics of the person, characteristics of the stimulus,
and characteristics of the situation are key to understanding involvement. According to the study, these factors alone or combined,
could affect the level of involvement with products, advertisements, or purchase situations. Because antecedent variables can cause
the level of involvement to change, the researcher developed a context-free 20 item scale that measures the state of involvement
rather than involvement as a stable trait. This semantic differential scale measures the range between pairs of words such as in-
teresting and uninteresting, fascinating and mundane, and worthless versus valuable.
Given the lack of studies regarding personality, involvement, and engagement with specific types of organizations on SNS,
particularly nonprofit organizations, we pose the following research questions:
RQ1: What is the relationship of personality to individuals’ involvement with the nonprofit organization as indicated through the
PII measure?
RQ2: What is the relationship of personality to individuals’ engagement with nonprofit organizations as demonstrated through
volunteer hours, donations, and length of affiliation with the organization?

2.4. Perceived relationship investment (PRI)

Studies, such as those discussed above that have investigated involvement and engagement of stakeholders on SNS (Hollebeek
et al., 2014; Smith & Gallicano, 2015; Tsai & Men, 2013) have done so with regard to their effect on the organization-public re-
lationship outcomes such as trust, commitment, and satisfaction. As yet, however, no studies have explored the relationship of
personality to perceived relationship investment (PRI), which is defined as “a consumer’s perception of the extent to which a retailer
devotes resources, efforts, and attention aimed at maintaining or enhancing relationships with regular customers that do not have
outside value and cannot be recovered if these relationships are terminated” (De Wulf, Odekerken-Schroder, & Iacobucci, 2001, p.
35). Adopted from the marketing literature, the construct has recently become of interest in the strategic communication literature
(Cho & Auger, 2013; Sung, 2014; Sung & Kim, 2014) and suggests that actions taken by the organization to strengthen or build
relationships with their stakeholders are valuable only within that relationship and are determined by the perceived commitment of
the organization to the relationship by the stakeholders (De Wulf et al., 2001; De Wulf, Odekerken-Schroder, & Van Kenhove, 2003).
The majority of studies investigating PRI have also explored its outcomes, particularly with regard to relationship quality between
the organization and its stakeholders (De Wulf et al., 2001; Sung, 2014; Yoon, Cho, & Sohn, 2008). Among the studies that in-
vestigated relationship quality indicators are those that investigated stakeholder satisfaction (Brown, Barry, Dacin & Gunst, 2005;
Hong & Yang, 2009), trust in the organization (Auger, 2014; Hong & Yang, 2009) and commitment to the relationship
(Sargeant & Lee, 2004). These three relationship quality indicators were influenced by PRI in a study by Sung (2014) and also found
to be highly correlated to PRI in an investigation by Cho and Auger (2013) which also included control mutuality. Additional studies
such as those by De Wulf et al. (2001, 2003) and Yoon et al. (2008) have extended the investigation of relationship quality indicators
to consider their role as mediators in the relationship between PRI and loyalty or behavioral outcomes.

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2.5. Nonprofit organizations and social media

The use of social media for communication and development of relationships by organizations is of keen interest to researchers.
No longer are investigations merely querying which organizations are using social media and to what extent, they are now in-
vestigating the implications and outcomes of such behavior (Men & Tsai, 2013; Sung & Kim, 2014). For example, Men and Tsai (2013)
and Tsai and Men (2013) recognized the importance of stakeholder engagement and motivation to perceptions of the organizational
behavior. Unfortunately, none of these investigations has involved the nonprofit organizational context, even though nonprofit
organizations outperform profit entities, in terms of adoption and use of social media (Barnes & Andonian, 2011).
Studies have, however, investigated nonprofit organizations’ use of social media. For example, Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) de-
monstrating that Twitter is used by such organizations in three broad functional areas of building community, providing information,
and requesting action, however, a subsequent study found little evidence of relationship-building activity, interactivity, conversation
or community-building by nonprofits on Twitter (Lovejoy, Waters, & Saxton, 2012). Moreover, while many studies have demon-
strated the predominant use of one-way communication by nonprofits on social media (Bortree & Seltzer, 2009; Cho & Schweickart,
2015; Lovejoy et al., 2012), others have demonstrated substantive and valuable use of two-way communication by these organi-
zations (Auger, 2013; Briones, Kuch, Liu, & Jin, 2011; Cho, Schweickart, & Haase, 2014).
Although social media has provided an inexpensive and valuable avenue for communication with stakeholders, there are a dearth
of studies that investigate the effects of such communication on the perceptions of stakeholders in the nonprofit context. Yet, given
the need for positive behavioral intentions from stakeholders, particularly in the nonprofit sector where donations and volunteers are
key to survival, such information is of great importance, potentially providing direction for more effective communication and
positive outcomes. As such, the following research questions are posed:
RQ3: Is there a relationship between personality and perceived relationship investment of the nonprofit organization?
RQ4: Is there a relationship between involvement and perceived relationship investment of the nonprofit organization?

3. Method

3.1. Sample and data collection procedure

An online survey with a national sample was conducted to answer the research questions aforementioned. A professional panel
recruitment company was obtained by the researchers to recruit a sample of adults aged 18 or older. US residents who were registered
at the panel company were invited to participate in the survey, by clicking the study website which was directed to the Qualtrics
survey platform. Participants were screened for appropriateness by asking them whether they were actively following or friending a
nonprofit organization on social media. They were also asked to indicate approximately how many such organizations they were
following or friending. Since relationships with nonprofit organizations on social media are central to the study, participants that
indicated a lack of such relationships were thanked for their time and asked to exit the study before any further data were collected.
Participants who passed the screening questions were then asked to write in the name of the nonprofit organization with which they
engaged most often on social media. Software coding then inserted the name of the organization into subsequent questions in the
survey, where applicable.

3.2. Survey instrument

An Internet based survey platform was used to develop the survey instrument. Prior academic research into personality, in-
volvement, perceived relationship investment, and organizational relationships were used to develop the questions. Participants were
asked a variety of questions about their relationship as a donor and/or volunteer for nonprofit organizations, such as, “approximate
volunteer time in hours spent in the last year” or “approximate number of organizations I volunteer for each year” and were asked to
indicate the organization with which they had the strongest relationship. Participants were then asked to elucidate their relationship
with the selected organization, by indicating the number of years they had been involved with that organization and whether they
could be characterized as a donor, volunteer, or donor and volunteer. They were also asked to indicate the various social media with
which they interacted with nonprofits, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat.

3.3. Measures

To measure personality, Goldberg’s (1992) IPIP big-five factor markers were used. Stated earlier, the big-five factors represent the
extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability or neuroticism, and openness characteristics of personality.
Having 10 items to measure each factor, a total of 50 items was adopted. As shown in Table 1, the reliability of the measures for all
five factors was satisfactory, ranging from .83 (conscientiousness) to .92 (emotional). PRI was measured with three items developed
by De Wulf et al. (2001). Given that the original scales of PRI were to describe the relationship between a retailor store customers, the
measures were modified slightly to best capture relationships between nonprofit organizations and their publics on social media. The
Cronbach’s alpha was .91. Both IPIP and PRI items were answered on a seven-point Likert-scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to
4 = neutral to 7 = strongly agree.
Involvement was measured with Zaichkowsky’s (1994) Personal Involvement Inventory (PII), which is composed of the 10 item
semantic differential scale. The specific items are as follows: unimportant/important, boring/interesting, irrelevant/relevant,

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Table 1
The measures of Variables Tested.

Variables and Items Cronbach’s α M (SD)

Personality Factor—Extroversion .91 4.57 (1.25)

I am the life of the party.
I feel comfortable around people.
I start conversations.
I talk to a lot of different people at parties.
I don't mind being the center of attention.
I don't talk a lot. (R)
I keep in the background. (R)
I have little to say. (R)
I don't like to draw attention to myself. (R)
I am quiet around strangers. (R)
Personality Factor—Agreeableness .86 5.76 (.95)
I am interested in people.
I sympathize with others' feelings.
I have a soft heart.
I take time out for others.
I feel others' emotions.
I make people feel at ease.
I am not really interested in others. (R)
I insult people. (R)
I am not interested in other people's problems. (R)
I feel little concern for others. (R)
Personality Factor— Conscientiousness .83 5.26 (.96)
I am always prepared.
I pay attention to details.
I get chores done right away.
I like order.
I follow a schedule.
I am exacting in my work.
I leave my belongs around. (R)
I make a mess of things. (R)
I often forget to put things back in their proper place. (R)
I shirk my duties. (R)
Personality Factor— Emotional .92 4.5 (1.32)
I am relaxed most of the time.
I seldom feel blue.
I get stressed out easily.
I worry about things.
I am easily disturbed. (R)
I get upset easily. (R)
I change my mood a lot. (R)
I have frequent mood swings. (R)
I get irritated easily. (R)
I often feel blue. (R)
Personality Factor— Intellect .84 5.33 (.93)
I have a rich vocabulary.
I have a vivid imagination.
I have excellent ideas.
I am quick to understand things.
I use difficult words.
I spend time reflecting on things.
I am full of ideas.
I have difficulty understanding abstract ideas. (R)
I am not interested in abstract ideas. (R)
I do not have a good imagination. (R)
PRI .91 5.78 (1.07)
(NPO) makes efforts to increase loyalty of their social media followers/friends like me.
(NPO) makes various efforts to improve its tie with social media followers/friends like me.
(NPO) really cares about keeping relationships with social media followers/friends like me.
Involvement .94 6.42 (.77)
Unimportant/Important
Boring/Interesting
Irrelevant/Relevant
Unexciting/Exciting
Means nothing to me/Means a lot to me
Unappealing/Appealing
Mundane/Fascinating
Worthless/Valuable
(continued on next page)

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Table 1 (continued)

Variables and Items Cronbach’s α M (SD)

Uninvolving/Involving
Not needed/Needed
Engagement—Consuming .84 5.98 (.89)
Watching videos on the nonprofit organization’s social media sites
Viewing pictures on he nonprofit organization’s social media sites
Reading the nonprofit organization’s posts, user comments, or other information on social media sites
Liking/joining the nonprofit organization’s social media sites
Engagement—Contributing .83 5.63 (1.09)
Engaging in conversations on the nonprofit organization’s social media sites (e.g., commenting, asking, and answering questions)
Sharing the nonprofit organization’s social media posts on my own social media sites/pages (e.g., video, audio, pictures, texts)
Recommending the nonprofit organization’s social media sites to my social media contacts
Uploading video, audio, pictures, or images relevant to the nonprofit organization

unexciting/exciting, means nothing to me/means a lot to me, unappealing/appealing, mundane/fascinating, worthless/valuable,

uninvolving/involving, and not needed/needed (α = .94). To measure individuals’ engagement with the nonprofit organization of
their choice on social media, the study adopted Men and Tsai’s (2013) measures, modifying them into the nonprofit settings. Four
items for each type of engagement (passive/consuming and active/contributing), respectively, were used. Therefore, a total of 8 items
of engagement on social media were measured. The reliability for consuming engagement was .84 whereas the alpha value for
contributing engagement was .83.

4. Results

4.1. Participants’ demographic information

A total of 535 respondents who passed two screening questions participated in the survey. The majority of survey participants
were female (n = 347 or 64.9%), Caucasian (n = 385 or 72.0%) and full-time employed (n = 295 or 55.1%). The average age was
38.44 (SD = 12.95). In terms of the relationships with nonprofit organizations of their choice, 197 (36.8%) participants identified
themselves as donors and 82 (15.3%) of them described themselves as volunteers. More than a quarter of the participants (n = 148 or
27.7%) identified as both donors and volunteers, whereas about 20% of them (n = 108) followed or friended nonprofit organizations’
social media even though they are neither donors nor volunteers.
The average donation dollars contributed to the nonprofit organization in the last year was $344.51 (SD = 1278.58) and the
average time spent volunteering was 94.03 h (SD = 915.91). The mean for the years with the chosen organization was 5.55
(SD = 6.09). In addition, among various types of social media, the participants reported that Facebook (n = 506 or 94.6%) was the
most frequently used to communicate with the nonprofit organizations, Twitter (n = 172 or 32.1%) was second in popularity fol-
lowed by YouTube (n = 86 or 16.1%), Instagram (n = 84 or 15.7%), and Pinterest (n = 50 or 9.3%). Some of them also used other
types of social media, such as Tumblr, Snapchat, Google+, or LinkedIn.

4.2. Answers to research questions

The first research question explored the relationship between personality and involvement. Based on a series of correlation tests,
all five personality factors were significantly positively associated with involvement at p = .01 level. Looking more closely, of 5
personality factors, agreeableness had the strongest correlation (r = .29), followed by conscientiousness (r = .24), Intellect (r = .20),
extraversion (r = .16), and emotional (r = .12).
To answer RQ2 which addressed possible association between personality and engagement on social media, the study employed a
series of correlation tests for both passive consuming and active contributing engagement types. Overall, all five personality factors
were significantly correlated with passive engagement at p = .01 level and four of the five were significantly correlated with active
engagement, except for the emotional personality factor. Agreeableness provided the strongest correlation in both types of en-
gagement.
More specifically, in terms of passive engagement on social media (i.e., consuming), agreeableness had the strongest correlation
(r = .32), followed by intellect (r = .30), conscientiousness (r = .24), extraversion (r = .18), and emotional (r = .13). On the other
hand, the results of correlation between personality and the active social media engagement (i.e., contributing) were slightly different
from those found for passive engagement, where agreeableness again had the strongest correlation (r = .25), followed by extra-
version (r = .23), intellect (r = .23), and conscientiousness (r = .22). However, emotional characteristics (r = .08) were not cor-
related with active social media engagement.
Answering RQ3 that explored to what extent personality factors are linked with PRI, the correlation results showed that all
personality characteristics are significantly related to PRI at p = .01. Of the 5 personality characteristics, agreeableness had the
strongest correlation (r = .21), followed by conscientiousness (r = .20), intellect (r = .19), extraversion (r = .14), and emotional
(r = .13).
Results of correlation testing relating to RQ4, which sought a relationship between involvement and PRI, demonstrated a

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significantly positive association between the two variables (r = .40, p < .01). In addition, the study explored potential linkages
between PRI and engagement, the correlation results for which showed that PRI was statistically significantly associated with both
passive (r = .46) and active (r = .36) engagement on social media at p = .01.

5. Discussion

This study sought to determine the relationships among a variety of factors that may contribute to a deeper understanding of the
intricacies of organizational public relationships in a social media context. Specifically, the researchers were interested in de-
termining some of the underlying characteristics of individuals that could be antecedent to the level of involvement and engagement
these individuals exhibit with nonprofit organizations on SNS. Results of the research questions indicate that the ‘Big 5′ personality
traits are significantly correlated with individuals’ perception of organizational investment (PRI) in the relationship, with the extent
to which these individuals are involved with the organization, and how actively or passively engaged they are with the organization’s
SNS. This could have some interesting implications for organization-public relationships in a social media context.
Research has considered antecedent factors and outcomes of the organization-public relationship such as trust, satisfaction,
commitment, and control mutuality (Hon & Grunig, 1999), transparency (Rawlins, 2008), enhanced organizational reputation
(Yang & Grunig, 2005) and behavior (Bruning, 2002) among many others, however these studies have focused on the antecedent
conditions of the organization to interact rather than antecedent conditions of the individual in the relationship. As such, this study adds
to theory-building in public relations by investigating the ‘Big 5′ personality traits as antecedent conditions of publics involvement
and engagement in online OPR.
For example, the study indicates that extroverted people are more willing to actively engage with both the nonprofits and their
publics on social media by participating in social media conversations, sharing nonprofits’ information on their own social media
sites, or creating content relevant to the nonprofit organizations they follow or friend on social media. This supports results of Correa
et al.’s (2010) study and also indicates an antecedent characteristic of the individual – that of extroversion – which has an effect on
the contributing, active behavior of the individual in support of the organization’s SNS.
Overall, agreeableness was the antecedent personality trait most important to all of the factors examined in this study. Moore and
McElroy (2012) argued that “agreeableness is said to favorably influence social interactions and their perceived quality” (p. 269) and
results of this study confirm this assertion and provide fodder for theory-building in areas of public relations research such as crisis
communication, and issue management. Since agreeableness describes those who are trusting, sympathetic, and cooperative, as well
as flexible, kind, and forgiving, research could investigate the extent to which carefully crafted, targeted messages aimed at bolstering
these aspects of publics, could moderate the development of crises or recovery from crisis. For example, creating messages that bring
out the sympathetic, cooperative, and forgiving aspects of agreeableness could potentially assist organizations that find themselves in
trouble.
On a more general but important note, nonprofit organizations rely on donors and volunteers to ensure the sustainability of their
programs and services. As such, nonprofit organizations could use information such as that found in this study regarding the
characteristics shared by those both passively and actively engaged and use this information to develop messages designed to micro-
target these publics on SNS. Micro-targeting has been used in political campaigns for more than a decade (Goodwin, 2015) and could
be used by nonprofits with similar effect. Research such as that discussed here, provides greater understanding of the personality
characteristics of nonprofit supporters and can help them in developing specific messages that resonate with subsets of their sup-
porters, much like the techniques used by recent political campaigns. As Goodwin (2015) notes:
Republicans, led by Karl Rove, pioneered the technique of political microtargeting in a presidential election in 2004, to get out the
vote for George W. Bush. But Barak Obama’s campaign perfected the strategy in 2008 and 2012, with Republicans falling behind
in their microtargeting prowess. (para. 5)
Future studies could examine the trait of agreeableness in greater depth as it relates to specific messages, imagery and storytelling
used by nonprofits to engender support. Moreover, the personality trait of intellect was also consistently high in correlation to active
and passive engagement, involvement, and perceived relationship quality. Since the correlations were high, future research should
explore in greater depth how and why such characteristics intersect with the desire to engage and be involved with nonprofit
organizations. Qualitative study of this relationship would likely provide great resources for nonprofit organizations as they embrace
the relationship-building potential of SNS, which has moved far beyond the initial conceptualization of the dialogic relationship
suggested by Kent and Taylor (1998) to a much more dynamic dialogic relationship where stakeholders not only provide feedback but
also create and add user-generated content in an actively contributing process to the organization’s SNS’s pages.
Overall, the insights provided by this study are important as nonprofits struggle to remain viable in an increasingly crowded
philanthropic environment where private individuals can develop crowdfunding campaigns to provide financial support for medical
bills or entrepreneurship ideas. De Wulf et al. (2003) suggested that customized campaigns to make people feel special would lead
customers to perceive a greater level of investment in the relationship by organizations. Using personality and other individual
characteristics to micro-target stakeholders could similarly affect nonprofit supporters, leading to increased loyalty to the organi-
zation, satisfaction in the relationship, and commitment to the relationship. Bortree (2011) and Men and Tsai (2013) found that
greater involvement or engagement with an organization led to a more satisfactory relationship with that organization, while Men
and Tsai (2013) discovered that participants who were engaged were also more receptive to messages.
Given that certain personality traits such as agreeableness, intellect, and conscientiousness were most strongly aligned with
involvement, passive and active engagement, and PRI, it would seem likely that such stakeholders would also be receptive to micro-

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targeted messages aimed at strengthening the relationships between specific nonprofits and their supporters. Future research should
certainly examine this possibility.

6. Limitations

Results of the study are limited in generalizability by the gender, age, and employment status of the participants. The majority of
participants were female, employed, and near to middle age with an average age of 38 and a half years old. Thus, we cannot assume
those younger or recently entering the job market, or those older and retired from the job market would interact and engage with
nonprofits in the same manner. Moreover, the participants self-reported the extent of their involvement with the nonprofit organi-
zation of their choice as well as their volunteering and donor behaviors and may have over- or under- represent themselves.

7. Conclusion

The big five personality traits of agreeableness, intellect, conscientiousness, emotional stability or neuroticism, and extroverted
versus introverted characteristics have been used to micro-target voters in recent political elections and, according to Goodwin
(2015) vast databases of data pertaining to individuals, including their personality types, are being developed to provide for even
tighter analyses. Such detailed information can be helpful not only to politicians, but also to businesses and nonprofits who must get
their messages to penetrate through a vast and ever-increasing marketplace of ideas and information.
Personality is important because it reflects fundamental qualities that may influence an individual’s behavior (Gill, 2011). This
study demonstrated significant correlation between each of the five personality traits and several variables. For example, the re-
lationship between the big five personality traits and the involvement of stakeholders with nonprofit organizations of their choice
was significant as were the ties between these personality traits and passive engagement. Four of the five were also positively
correlated to active engagement of participants with nonprofits on social media. Moreover, all five traits were positively related to the
perceived relationship investment of the nonprofits to their stakeholders. Having demonstrated the relationship between personality
and stakeholders’ involvement and engagement on social media, future research should examine the intimacy of the constructs in
greater depth, exploring why and what specific personality attributes affect online relationships with nonprofits and how those
attributes can be used to greater effect by the organizations to build and maintain support.

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