Ambiguity seeking as a result of the status quo bias

Mercè Roca (), Robin Hogarth () and A. Maule

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2006, vol. 32, issue 3, 175-194

Abstract: Several factors affect attitudes toward ambiguity. What happens, however, when people are asked to exchange an ambiguous alternative in their possession for an unambiguous one? We present three experiments in which individuals preferred to retain the former. This status quo bias emerged both within- and between-subjects, with and without incentives, with different outcome distributions, and with endowments determined by both the experimenter and the participants themselves. Findings emphasize the need to account for the frames of reference under which evaluations of probabilistic information take place as well as modifications that should be incorporated into descriptive models of decision making. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006

Keywords: Ambiguity; Risk; Status quo bias; Decision making; Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11166-006-9518-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Ambiguity Seeking as a Result of the Status Quo Bias (2015)
Working Paper: Ambiguity seeking as a result of the status quo bias (2006)
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:kap:jrisku:v:32:y:2006:i:3:p:175-194

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/11166/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11166-006-9518-8

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty is currently edited by W. Kip Viscusi

More articles in Journal of Risk and Uncertainty from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().