IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/medema/v27y2007i3p281-287.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Risk Attitudes Differ across Domains and Respondent Types?

Author

Listed:
  • Lisa A. Prosser

    (Center for Child Health Care Studies, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, Massachusetts, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, Massachusetts, lprosser@hms.harvard.edu)

  • Eve Wittenberg

    (Institute for Technology Assessment, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts)

Abstract

Objective . To evaluate differences in risk attitude across the domains of health and money for 2 types of respondents, patients and community members. Methods . Two groups of respondents, patients with multiple sclerosis ( n = 56) and members of the general community ( n = 57), completed a survey that collected information on risk attitudes and socioeconomic and clinical variables (e.g., disability level). Risk attitude was measured using 2 standard-gamble questions on money and 1 standard-gamble question on health outcomes. Multivariate regression was used to evaluate the relationship between risk attitude and respondent type (patient v. community), adjusting for covariates that could affect risk attitude. Results . The median certainty equivalents for money gambles were significantly different from and less than the expected value of the gamble for both types of respondents. Median certainty equivalents for the health gamble were not significantly different from the expected value for either group of respondents. For all 3 gambles, there was no difference in median certainty equivalents between the 2 types of respondents in both unadjusted and adjusted analyses. Conclusions . Risk attitude varied across domains but not by respondent type. Patients and community members were predominantly risk neutral with respect to health outcomes and risk averse with respect to money. Research on risk preferences on money outcomes may not be an appropriate proxy for risk preferences regarding health outcomes. Risk preferences may depend more on characteristics of the choice than on respondent type.

Suggested Citation

  • Lisa A. Prosser & Eve Wittenberg, 2007. "Do Risk Attitudes Differ across Domains and Respondent Types?," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 27(3), pages 281-287, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:27:y:2007:i:3:p:281-287
    DOI: 10.1177/0272989X07300602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X07300602
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0272989X07300602?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Castro, M.F.; & Guccio, C.; & Romeo, D.;, 2022. "An assessment of physicians’ risk attitudes using laboratory and field data," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 22/26, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. Maureen Cropper & Alan Krupnick & William Raich, 2016. "Preferences for Equality in Environmental Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 22644, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Galizzi, Matteo M. & Miraldo, Marisa & Stavropoulou, Charitini & van der Pol, Marjon, 2016. "Doctor–patient differences in risk and time preferences: A field experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 171-182.
    4. Sophie Massin & Antoine Nebout & Bruno Ventelou, 2018. "Predicting medical practices using various risk attitude measures," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(6), pages 843-860, July.
    5. Pablo Brañas‐Garza & Matteo M. Galizzi & Jeroen Nieboer, 2018. "Experimental And Self‐Reported Measures Of Risk Taking And Digit Ratio (2d:4d): Evidence From A Large, Systematic Study," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 59(3), pages 1131-1157, August.
    6. repec:imp:wpaper:12579 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Emmanuel Kemel & Corina Paraschiv, 2018. "Deciding about human lives: an experimental measure of risk attitudes under prospect theory," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(1), pages 163-192, June.
    8. Joseph G Eisenhauer, 2012. "Measuring Aversion to Health Risks," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 4(2), pages 96-107.
    9. Miraldo, M & Galizzi, M & Stavropoulou, C, 2013. "In sickness but not in wealth: Field evidence on patients’ risk preferences in the financial and health domain," Working Papers 31053, Imperial College, London, Imperial College Business School.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    risk attitude; patients; health;
    All these keywords.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:medema:v:27:y:2007:i:3:p:281-287. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.