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Motivated Risk Assessments

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Do people form risk assessments to justify their actions? I investigate this question in a field experiment studying the dynamics of risk assessments for visiting a cafe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Randomly varying the incentive for a visit, I find that subjects with a high incentive visit cafes more often and downplay the risk compared with subjects with a low incentive. Importantly, the downplaying happens in anticipation of the visit and without new information, suggesting that the assessment update justifies engagement in risky behavior. This finding is inconsistent with Bayesian updating but consistent with the notion of motivated reasoning.

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  • Islam, Marco, 2021. "Motivated Risk Assessments," Working Papers 2021:12, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 26 Jul 2022.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2021_012
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Risk Assessment; Motivated Reasoning; Self-Deception; Field Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

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