Comparing Group and Individual Choices under Risk and Ambiguity: An Experimental Study

Marielle Brunette (), Laure Cabantous () and Stéphane Couture
Additional contact information
Laure Cabantous: Nottingham University Business School

ICBBR Working Papers from International Centre for Behavioural Business Research

Abstract: In this paper, we build on the emerging literature on group decision-making to study the so-called ‘group shift’ effect, i.e., groups are less risk-averse than individuals. Our study complements past research in two ways. First, we study the group shift effect under two sources of uncertainty, namely risk where probabilities are known, and ambiguity where probabilities are imprecise. Second, we study the impact of the group decision rule (unanimity and majority) on group shift. Results from a lottery-choice experiment show a general tendency for the group shift effect, regardless of the decision rule. The group shift effect, however, is found to be significant only under risk in the unanimity treatment. Our study hence provides a clear test of the effect of the decision rule on the group shift effect under both risk and ambiguity.

Keywords: Collective decision; Unanimity; Majority; Preferences; Risk; Ambiguity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~lizecon/RePEc/bbr/pdf/15.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bbr:workpa:15

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ICBBR Working Papers from International Centre for Behavioural Business Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Laure Cabantous ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).