IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/iza/izawol/journl2019n454.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring individual risk preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine C. Eckel

    (Texas A&M University, USA)

Abstract

Risk aversion is an important factor in many settings, including individual decisions about investment or occupational choice, and government choices about policies affecting environmental, industrial, or health risks. Risk preferences are measured using surveys or incentivized games with real consequences. Reviewing the different approaches to measuring individual risk aversion shows that the best approach will depend on the question being asked and the study's target population. In particular, economists’ gold standard of incentivized games may not be superior to surveys in all settings.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine C. Eckel, 2019. "Measuring individual risk preferences," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 454-454, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:2019:n:454
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/454/pdfs/measuring-individual-risk-preferences.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://wol.iza.org/articles/measuring-individual-risk-preferences
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    2. Falk, A. & Becker, A. & Dohmen, T.J. & Enke, B. & Huffman, D. & Sunde, U., 2015. "The nature and predictive power of preferences: Global evidence," Research Memorandum 039, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    3. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    4. Uri Gneezy & Jan Potters, 1997. "An Experiment on Risk Taking and Evaluation Periods," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 631-645.
    5. Binswanger, Hans P, 1981. "Attitudes toward Risk: Theoretical Implications of an Experiment in Rural India," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(364), pages 867-890, December.
    6. Catherine C. Eckel & Philip J. Grossman, 2008. "Forecasting Risk Attitudes: An Experimental Study Using Actual and Forecast Gamble Choices," Monash Economics Working Papers archive-01, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    7. Ola Andersson & Håkan J. Holm & Jean-Robert Tyran & Erik Wengström, 2016. "Risk Aversion Relates To Cognitive Ability: Preferences Or Noise?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(5), pages 1129-1154, October.
    8. Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri & Imas, Alex, 2013. "Experimental methods: Eliciting risk preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 43-51.
    9. Chetan Dave & Catherine Eckel & Cathleen Johnson & Christian Rojas, 2010. "Eliciting risk preferences: When is simple better?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 219-243, December.
    10. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2016. "A theoretical and experimental appraisal of four risk elicitation methods," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(3), pages 613-641, September.
    11. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2013. "A Theoretical and Experimental Appraisal of Five Risk Elicitation Methods," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 547, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    12. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Machado, Sara R. & Miniaci, Raffaele, 2016. "Temporal stability, cross-validity, and external validity of risk preferences measures: experimental evidence from a UK representative sample," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67554, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahsanuzzaman, & Priyo, Asad Karim Khan & Nuzhat, Kanti Ananta, 2022. "Effects of communication, group selection, and social learning on risk and ambiguity attitudes: Experimental evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    2. David Johnson & John Barry Ryan, 2020. "Amazon Mechanical Turk workers can provide consistent and economically meaningful data," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(1), pages 369-385, July.
    3. Sigl, Lukas & Hirschauer, Norbert, 2024. "The hedging efficiency of wheat futures in various types of farms in Germany," SocArXiv pvq9t, Center for Open Science.
    4. Pace, Noemi & Daidone, Silvio, 2024. "Impact of development interventions on individual risk preferences: Evidence from a field-lab experiment and survey data," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    5. Jacob K Goeree & Bernardo Garcia-Pola, 2023. "A Non-Parametric Test of Risk Aversion," Papers 2308.02083, arXiv.org.
    6. Samek, Anya & Gray, Andre & Datar, Ashlesha & Nicosia, Nancy, 2021. "Adolescent time and risk preferences: Measurement, determinants and field consequences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 460-488.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Menkhoff, Lukas & Sakha, Sahra, 2017. "Estimating risky behavior with multiple-item risk measures," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 59-86.
    2. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Machado, Sara R. & Miniaci, Raffaele, 2016. "Temporal stability, cross-validity, and external validity of risk preferences measures: experimental evidence from a UK representative sample," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67554, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Tamás Csermely & Alexander Rabas, 2016. "How to reveal people’s preferences: Comparing time consistency and predictive power of multiple price list risk elicitation methods," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 107-136, December.
    4. Gary Charness & Thomas Garcia & Theo Offerman & Marie Claire Villeval, 2020. "Do measures of risk attitude in the laboratory predict behavior under risk in and outside of the laboratory?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 60(2), pages 99-123, April.
    5. Crosetto, P. & Filippin, A., 2017. "Safe options induce gender differences in risk attitudes," Working Papers 2017-05, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    6. Ranganathan, Kavitha & Lejarraga, Tomás, 2021. "Elicitation of risk preferences through satisficing," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    7. repec:cup:judgdm:v:14:y:2019:i:3:p:234-279 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Giuseppe Attanasi & Nikolaos Georgantzís & Valentina Rotondi & Daria Vigani, 2018. "Lottery- and survey-based risk attitudes linked through a multichoice elicitation task," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(3), pages 341-372, May.
    9. Utteeyo Dasgupta & Subha Mani & Smriti Sharma & Saurabh Singhal, 2016. "Eliciting risk preferences: Firefighting in the field," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-47, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. Holzmeister, Felix & Stefan, Matthias, 2019. "The Risk Elicitation Puzzle Revisited: Across-Methods (In)consistency?," OSF Preprints pj9u2, Center for Open Science.
    11. Filippin, Antonio & Crosetto, Paolo, 2014. "A Reconsideration of Gender Differences in Risk Attitudes," IZA Discussion Papers 8184, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2013. "A Theoretical and Experimental Appraisal of Five Risk Elicitation Methods," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 547, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    13. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2019. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Working Papers 2019-19, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    14. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2016. "A theoretical and experimental appraisal of four risk elicitation methods," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(3), pages 613-641, September.
    15. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2023. "Safe options and gender differences in risk attitudes," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 66(1), pages 19-46, February.
    16. Lau Lilleholt, 2019. "Cognitive ability and risk aversion: A systematic review and meta analysis," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 234-279, May.
    17. Collier, Trevor & Cotten, Stephen & Roush, Justin, 2022. "Using pandemic behavior to test the external validity of laboratory measurements of risk aversion and guilt," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    18. Felix Holzmeister & Matthias Stefan, 2021. "The risk elicitation puzzle revisited: Across-methods (in)consistency?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 593-616, June.
    19. Paolo Crosetto & Antonio Filippin, 2013. "The “bomb” risk elicitation task," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 31-65, August.
    20. Michele Garagnani, 2023. "The predictive power of risk elicitation tasks," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 67(2), pages 165-192, October.
    21. Naranjo, Maria A. & Alpízar, Francisco & Martinsson, Peter, 2019. "Alternatives for Risk Elicitation in the Field: Evidence from Coffee Farmers in Costa Rica," EfD Discussion Paper 19-21, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    risk aversion; risk preferences; incentivized measures; survey measures;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • C1 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:2019:n:454. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.