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Safe options and gender differences in risk attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • Paolo Crosetto

    (Univ. Grenoble-Alpes)

  • Antonio Filippin

    (University of Milan
    Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA))

Abstract

Gender differences in risk attitudes have recently been shown to be context-dependent rather than ubiquitous. We manipulate three widely used risk elicitation tasks to test whether the presence of a safe option among the set of alternatives can explain the heterogeneity of the findings. We find that the availability of a safe option induces significant effects in two out of three tasks. Despite the well-known instability of elicited risk preferences, we show with a structural model that the effect on risk attitudes is rather stable across tasks, but not sufficiently strong to reach traditional significance levels.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jrisku:v:66:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s11166-022-09400-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11166-022-09400-0
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