Responsibility effects in decision making under risk

Julius Pahlke, Sebastian Strasser and Ferdinand Vieider ()

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2015, vol. 51, issue 2, 125-146

Abstract: We explore situations in which a decision maker bears responsibility for somebody else’s outcomes as well as for her own. We study such choices for gains and losses, and for different gain probabilities. For 50–50 lotteries over gains we find that being responsible for somebody else’s payoffs increases risk aversion. In the loss domain, on the other hand, we find significantly different behavior relative to gains, with slightly more risk seeking under responsibility. 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 increased risk seeking under conditions of responsibility relative to large probabilities. This discredits hypotheses of a ‘cautious shift’ under responsibility, and may indicate an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes usually found for individual choices. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Risk attitude; Prospect theory; Social norms; Responsibility; Other-regarding preferences; D03; D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

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Working Paper: Responsibility Effects in Decision Making under Risk (2010)
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DOI: 10.1007/s11166-015-9223-6

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