What are the differences between Americans who are interested in or planning to relocate and their peers who are not interested? Are there any personality characteristics that separate the two groups? In April of 2006, we conducted a special survey of nearly 8,000 adult Americans. This gave us a sample that included a thousand respondents who were either planning to relocate or considering it to compare with the remaining seven thousand who were not. We did not include those interested solely in buying property overseas among the relocators. We wanted to focus on those actually relocating.

We posed special questions that required more thought than the normal survey question. Here are two of those questions that demonstrated differences between the two groups.

If you had to choose between these two job opportunities, which would you choose?

1. A job where your responsibilities, the work environment, and the people you would work with were regularly changing.
2. A job where your responsibilities, the work environment, and the people you would work with were stable and unlikely to change.
3. Not sure

Here are the results for those who were not considering relocation:

The job is likely to change 28.6%
The job is unlikely to change 58.9%
Not sure 12.5%

Here are the results for considering relocation:

The job is likely to change 43.9%
The job is unlikely to change 38.0%
Not sure 18.2%

Here are the results presented graphically.

You have the opportunity to travel to an exotic tropical nation where people live a very different lifestyle than you. Do you stay in the “safe” areas where tourists are welcome or do you visit areas where tourists rarely are seen?

1. I wouldn’t visit an exotic nation, I prefer to travel near my home, if at all.
2. I would stick to the areas that the guidebooks said were best for tourists.
3. I would set out on my own to visit any area that looked interesting.
4. Not sure

Here are the results for those who were not considering relocation:

Wouldn’t visit – 16.5%
Stick to guidebooks – 38.2%
Set out on my own – 38.0%
Not sure – 7.4%

Here are the results for those considering relocation:

Wouldn’t visit – 5.6%
Stick to guidebooks – 18.3%
Set out on my own – 70.3%
Not sure – 4.5%

Here are the results presented graphically.

There was a clear difference in the way the two groups responded to an uncertain or changing environment. However, when considering whether statements described themselves (“If I take a risk and fail, I can handle the consequences” and “I feel uneasy when I have to make a decision with an uncertain outcome”), the two groups answered almost identically.

We had expected potential relocators to be more self-confident and willing to take “risks” like the two above and that is what we found. We were not expecting them to be no more self-confident than non-relocators, but those were the results. It’s interesting that they are much more likely to enter unknown territory that might be risky, but not show a higher level of self-confidence in other regards.