Variations in Individual Decision Making: Children, Adults, and Economic Theory

Patricia C. Grieggs

The American Economist, 2010, vol. 55, issue 2, 124-135

Abstract: This study examines differences in individual decision making between children and adults using a paired lottery choice experiment. A lottery choice experiment involves selecting between two options, one with a small difference in payoffs and one with a large difference in payoffs, for each of ten decisions with increasing probability of obtaining the higher payoff. Based on subject decisions, risk preferences can be inferred. Particular attention is given to age and gender differences. The main result reveals that children choose significantly fewer “safe†lotteries than adults on average. Specifically, children act as risk-seeking in low winning percentage lotteries. There is no significant difference in safe choices between genders in both samples. These findings can prove to be an important asset when developing policies to curb hazardous behavior in children.

Keywords: Lottery choice experiment; Risk preferences; Experimental economics; Individual decision making; Children's decision making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/056943451005500213 (text/html)

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:sae:amerec:v:55:y:2010:i:2:p:124-135

DOI: 10.1177/056943451005500213

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The American Economist from Sage Publications
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().