Beyond money: Risk preferences across both economic and non-economic contexts predict financial decisions.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Important decisions about risk occur in wide-ranging contexts, from investing to healthcare. While an underlying, domain-general risk attitude has been identified across contexts, it remains unclear what role it plays in shaping behavior relative to more domain-specific risk attitudes. Clarifying the relationship between domain-general and domain-specific risk attitudes would inform decision-making theories and the construction of decision aids. The present research assessed the relative contribution of domain-general and domain-specific risk attitudes to financial risk taking. We examined risk attitudes across different decision domains, as revealed through a well-validated measure, the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale (DOSPERT). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a domain-general risk attitude shaped responses across multiple domains, and structural equation modeling showed that this domain-general risk attitude predicted observed behavioral risk premiums in a financial decision-making task better than domain-specific financial risk attitudes. Thus, assessments of risk attitudes that include both economic and non-economic domains improve predictions of financial risk taking due to the enhanced insight they provide into underlying, domain-general risk preferences.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Reeck, C; Mullette-Gillman, OA; McLaurin, RE; Huettel, SA
Published Date
- January 2022
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 17 / 12
Start / End Page
- e0279125 -
PubMed ID
- 36525444
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC9757577
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1932-6203
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 1932-6203
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0279125
Language
- eng