Building upon the reference dependent preferences model, we develop a theoretical framework to examine the relationship between environment and preferences. To verify the model's prediction, we use a combined artefactual field experiment and household survey data in Vietnam to investigate...

Decisions involving risk are usually taken in the presence of other insurable or non-insurable risks, the latter type called background risk. We examine how changing background risk influences risk-taking based on panel data with monthly observations from Senegalese fishermen. Fishing income is...

The determinants of risk attitude in couples are explored using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 2004 to 2009. The focus of the analysis is the repeated responses to the survey question about general willingness to take risk. Responses to this question are provided on a...

This paper presents the Bomb Risk Elicitation Task (BRET), an intuitive procedure aimed at measuring risk attitudes. Subjects decide how many boxes to collect out of 100, one of which containing a bomb. Earnings increase linearly with the number of boxes accumulated but are zero if the bomb is...

We use data on households' deductible choices in auto and home insurance to estimate a structural model of risky choice that incorporates standard risk aversion (concave utility over final wealth), loss aversion, and nonlinear probability weighting. Our estimates indicate that nonlinear...

It is often said that prudence and temperance play key roles in aversion to negative skewness and kurtosis, respectively. This paper puts a new perspective on these relationships and presents a characterization of higher-order risk preferences in terms of statistical moments. An implication is,...

It is still an ongoing discussion whether benefits resulting from reduced mortality risk should be valuated differently, depending on the age of the beneficiaries. Theory suggests that the influence of age on the value of statistical life (VSL), which is a monetary measure for reduced/prevented...

This paper examines the influence of implicit information on willingness to pay (WTP) values for prevention of the risk of dying in an avalanche. We present the results of a contingent valuation (CV) study carried out in Austria in two different periods (fall 2004 and winter 2005). The...

Despite extensive studies, the nature of risk attitudes remains a vigorously discussed question in economics and psychology. In expected utility theory, attitudes towards risk originate from changes in marginal utility. Cumulative prospect theory (CPT) adds an additional dimension: the weighting...

We study risk attitudes, ambiguity attitudes, and time preferences of 661 children and adolescents, aged ten to eighteen years, in an incentivized experiment. We relate experimental choices to field behavior. Experimental measures of impatience are found to be significant redictors of health...