Beyond money: Risk preferences across both economic and non-economic contexts predict financial decisions.
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.
Duke Scholars
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- Risk-Taking
- General Science & Technology
- Factor Analysis, Statistical
- Decision Making
- Attitude
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Risk-Taking
- General Science & Technology
- Factor Analysis, Statistical
- Decision Making
- Attitude