Responsibility effects in decision making under risk

Julius Pahlke, Sebastian Strasser and Ferdinand Vieider ()

Discussion Papers, WZB Junior Research Group Risk and Development from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: We explore situations in which a decision-maker bears responsibility for somebody else's outcomes as well as for her own. For gains we confirm the intuition that being responsible for somebody else's payoffs increases risk aversion, while in the loss domain we find increased risk seeking. In a second experiment we replicate the finding of increased risk aversion for large probabilities of a gain, while for small probability gains we find an increase of risk seeking under conditions of responsibility. This discredits hypotheses of a cautious shift under responsibility, and indicates an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes usually found for individual choices.

Keywords: risk attitude; prospect theory; social norms; responsibility; other-regarding preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-mic and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Responsibility effects in decision making under risk (2015)
Working Paper: Responsibility Effects in Decision Making under Risk (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbrad:spii2012402

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